Motherboard A motherboard allows all the parts of your computer to receive power and communicate with one another.

The CPU a.k.a. the process, microprocessor, or “brains of the computer”

The Central Processing Unit 3 parts of a CPU o Arithmetic/logic unit (ALU)  Contains the circuitry to carry out instructions o Control unit  Sequentially accesses and decodes program instructions  Coordinates flow of data in and out of ALU o Register  Storage within the processor

The Central Processing Unit and Random Access Memory (continued) Were does data go between processing? o Random access memory  Temporary, or volatile, storage

How does it get there? o System bus  Electronic pathways between the CPU and RAM

Front Side Bus A front side bus (FSB) is an electrical pathway on a computer’s motherboard which connects the various hardware components to the central processing unit (CPU). This bus is bi-directional, meaning data can flow both ways, allowing components to send and receive data from the CPU Since so much data passes through the front side bus, a computer’s overall performance will be dependent, in part, on its speed. Speed depends on how wide the bus is

ChipSets The chipset is the "glue" that connects the microprocessor to the rest of the motherboard It consists of two basic parts -- the northbridge and the southbridge Northbridge: The northbridge connects directly to the processor via the front side bus (FSB). A memory controller is located on the northbridge, which gives the CPU fast access to the memory.

Southbridge: The southbridge is slower than the northbridge Information from the CPU has to go through the northbridge before reaching the southbridge A southbridge chipset handles all of a computer's I/O functions, such as USB, audio, serial, the system BIOS

The Northbridge is located closer to the CPU than the Southbridge

PCI Slots:(Peripheral Component Interconnect) Mainly used for network and sound cards

AGP Slots: Accelerated Graphics Port AGP video cards are capable of a higher data transfer rate than PCI video cards.

ISA Slots: (Industry Standard Architecture) Used as an expansion slot for peripherals

BIOS Basic Input Output System Gives important instructions to the computer hardware

SATA Serial IDE Used to connect Optical Drives and Hard Drives to the Motherboard

The date Dec is the epoch date (representing this number in bits would be all zeros) When your system resets the system clock, it is reset to the epoch date Current time information is not stored in a file, rather it's synced from your hardware clock with /sbin/hwclock during boot. Seeing this date, usually means, your system clock has been reset, this is often caused by a faulty battery on your system board (a CMOS battery)

The Machine Cycle Execution of an instruction involves two phases: o Instruction phase, execution phase o Two phases together make up the machine cycle

The Machine Cycle (continued) Instruction phase o Step 1: Fetch instruction o Step 2: Decode instruction Execution Phase o Step 3: Execute instruction o Step 4: Store results

CPU Characteristics System clock o Produces a series of electronic pulses at a predetermined rate called clock speed  Clock Speed -- Measured in megahertz (MHz) or gigahertz (GHz) Wordlength o Number of bits that a CPU can process at once MIPS - Millions of instructions per second o Amount of time it takes to execute an instruction Cache -- measured in MB or KB o Temporary high-speed storage areas FSB speed – measured in (GHz/MHz)

Cache

Multiprocessing and Parallel Processing Multiprocessing o Uses more than one processing unit o Examples:  Parallel processing  Links several microprocessors to operate in parallel Multi-core processing o Incorporates two or more processors on a single chip