Unit 1

terabyte

A terabyte is 10^12 or 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. (1 trillion, 1024 gigabytes)

CPU

Abbreviation of central processing unit. The CPU is the brains of the computer. Sometimes referred to simply as the processor or central processor, the CPU is where most calculations take place.

ascii

American Standard Code for Information Interchange

Exabyte

An Exabyte is 10^18 or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. (1024 petabytes)

Interrupt Request Line

An assigned channel over which a device can send a signal to the processor to get its attention.

ccna

Cisco Certified Network Associate

I/O address

Each I/O device connected to your computer is mapped to a unique I/O (Input/Output) address. These addresses are assigned to every I/O port on your computer, including USB, Firewire, Ethernet, VGA, and DVI ports, as well as any other ports your computer might have.

ioapic

I/O advanced programmable interrupt controller

KHz

Kilohertz. (1,000 hertz/cycles per second).

frequency

Number of cycles per second

kilobit

One kilobit (abbreviated "Kb") contains 1024 bits

megabit

One megabit (abbreviated "Mb") is equal to 1,000 kilobits. There are 1,000 megabits in a gigabit.

GHz

Unit of measurement for a processor's clock speed. 1000 MHz.

MHz

a measure of frequency. one of these processors can cycle through its registers one million times each second.

byte

byte is a unit of measurement used to measure data. One byte contains eight binary bits, or a series of eight zeros and ones.

Serial

of or relating to the apparent or actual performance of data-processing operations one at a time

terabit

one thousand gigabits

parallel

sending data 2 or more bits at a time

bus width

the size of the internal electrical pathway along which signals are sent from one part of the computer to another. A wider bus can move more data, hence faster processing.

clock

- BIOS component that dictates the speed of the CPU

bit

A bit (short for "binary digit") is the smallest unit of measurement used to quantify computer data. It contains a single binary value of 0 or 1.

bus speed

A bus is simply a circuit that connects one part of the motherboard to another. The more data a bus can handle at one time, the faster it allows information to travel. The speed of the bus is measured in megahertz (MHz.

gigabit

A gigabit is 10^9 or 1,000,000,000 bits. One gigabit (abbreviated "Gb") is equal to 1,000 megabits or 1,000,000 kilobits.

gigabyte

A gigabyte is 10^9 or 1,024 megabytes (1 billion bytes)

kilobyte

A kilobyte is 10^3 or 1,024 bytes.

Memory address

A logical memory address defined in a processor's address bus that allows the system to access physical RAM or ROM memory locations.

Hz

A measurement of machine cycles per second that is also used to measure processor speed

megabyte

A megabyte is 10^6 or 1,024 kilobytes

petabyte

A petabyte is 10^15 or 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. (1024 terabytes)