CGS 2100 EXAM 2 Technology in Focus 1 Proprietary Software software that is sold by a company and is sold for a profit and without a source code Ex Microsoft Office Open Source Software is freely distributed no royalties accrue to the creators contains the source code and can be distributed to others Open Office is a free suite of programs that resemble Microsoft Office Open Office vs Microsoft Office Word vs Writer Excel vs Calc and Powerpoint vs Impress Writer saves as an odt extension as opposed to Word s docx extension Calc saves as an ods extension as opposed to Excel s xlsx extension Microsoft Visio not Vista vs Dia which is a Open Source Software that allows you to make flowcharts Why download Linux when you already have Windows o Windows has 90 percent of the market share of operating systems o Hackers can infect more computers through Microsoft Windows o Linux along with other Open Source Software are extremely portable you are able to store it on a jump drive and can transfer your operating system wherever you go o Linux and other Open Source operating systems take up less space Ububtu Main Linux Operating System distro Use can use Seamonkey Open Source Software vs Adobe Dreamweaver to create Use can use GIMP GNU Image Manipulation which Open Software vs Adobe web pages Photoshop for image editing Distributions or Distros the operating systems are available in different types Mac OS Snow Leopard is the latest Apple operating system Solid State Drives are expensive but very fast They can boot a system up in as little as When choosing a hard drive select one that spins at 7 200 10 000 rpm When choosing a mother board make sure it has enough PCI expansion slots for video 10 seconds and sound cards Chapter 6 Moore s Law A prediction named after Gordon Moore the cofounder of Intel states that the number of transistors on a CPU chip will double every 2 years DRAM Dynamic Random Access Memory the most common form of memory found in personal computers increases by about 60 every year Hard Drives tend increase by 50 every year Desktop systems are a better value than notebook computers in terms of computing power gained for your dollar o It cost more to fit all the components into a small space o Desktops cost less to upgrade and can add more expandability o Notebooks have a shorter life span External SATA SATA A fast transfer port that allows your computer to connect peripherals such as external hard drives to add more storage Express Card are cards that are inserted into the Express Card Slot can add a solid slate drive SSD eSTATA and FireWire ports and other capabilities to your system You can add an ExpressCard that allows you to read flash memory cards such as CompactFlash Memory Sticks and Secure Digital Cards System Evaluation To do this you look at your computer s subsystems see what they do and check how they perform These subsystems include the following CPU subsystem memory subsystem the computer s random access memory or RAM Storage subsystem hard drive and other drives Video Subsystem video card and monitor audio subsystem sound card and speakers and Ports EVALUATING THE CPU SUBSYSTEM CPU is located on the motherboard There are several different types the Intel such as the Core family with the i7 i5 and i3 and the Centro line and AMD processors such as the Athlon and Phenom the Core i7is the most advanced desktop CPU The CPU in the Xbox 360 is the Xenon The CPU is comprised of two units the control unit and the arithmetic logic unit o Control Unit coordinates the activities of all the other computer components o Arithmetic Logic Unit is responsible for performing all the arithmetic calculations x and the ALU also makes logic and comparison decisions such as comparing items to determine if one is greater than less than equal to or not equal to another o Every time the CPU performs a program instruction it goes through the same series of steps First it gets the required piece of data or instruction from RAM the temporary storage location for all the data and instructions the computer needs while it is running Next it decodes the instruction into something the computer can understand Once the CPU has decoded the instruction it executes the instruction and stores the result in RAM before getting the next instruction The process is called a machine cycle What makes on CPU different from another The primary distinction between CPUs is processing power which is determined by a number of factors One such factor is the design of the CPU in terms of the number of cores core is a complete processing section from a CPU embedded into one physical chip Another factor is how quickly the processor can work called its clock speed and the amount of immediate access memory the CPU has called its cache memory How will multiple core CPU help me Hyperthreading a technology that permits quicker processing of information by enabling a new set of instructions to start executing before the previous set has finished Hyperthreading allows two different programs to be processed at one time but they are sharing the computing resources of the chip With multiple cores each programs has the full attention of its own processing core This results in faster processing and smoother multitasking Intel Core i7 four cores Intel core i5 two cores Intel Pentium 4 hyperthreads working on 2 processes at once The Intel i7 980x has six cores each one using hyperthreading so it simulates have twelve processors How do I pick the fastest processor CPU performance also is affected by the amount of cache memory and the speed of the front side bus FSB Cache memory is a form of random access memory more accessible to the CPU than regular RAM ready access to the CPU caches memory gets data to the CPU for processing much faster than bringing the data in from RAM There are several levels of cache memory o Level 1 built on the chip for storage of data or commands that have just been used o Level 2 located on the CPU chip but placed slightly away from the CPU or it is on a chip close to the CPU longer to access Contains more storage area than level 1 o Level 3 Further away from the CPU but larger in size Another factor that impacts overall performance is the FSB speed o Front Side Bus FSB connects the processor CPU in your computer to the system memory highway on which data travels between the CPU and RAM FSB is measured in megahertz Picking the fastest CPU for the kind of work you do often involves researching some
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