CGS2060 Exam 2 Study Guide Key Terms Ch 6 3D sound card An expansion card that enables a computer to produce sounds that are omnidirectional or three dimensional Access time The time it takes a storage device to locate its stored data Bit depth The number of bits a video card uses to store data about each pixel on the monitor Cache memory Small blocks of memory located directly on and next to the Central processing unit CPU chip that act as holding places for recently or frequently used instructions or data that the CPU accesses the most When these instructions or data are stored in cache memory the CPU can more quickly retrieve them than if it had to access the instructions or data from random access memory RAM Clock speed The steady and constant pace at which a computer goes through machine cycles measured in hertz Hz Core A complete processing section from a CPU embedded into one physical chip CPU benchmarks Measurements used to compare performance between processors CPU usage graph Records your CPU usage for the past several seconds External SATA eSATA A port that will connect to some external hard drive models ExpressCard Notebooks are often equipped with an ExpressCard slot The ExpressCard can add a solid state drive SSD eSATA and FireWire ports and other capabilities to your system Graphics double data rate 5 GDDR5 A standard of video memory Graphics processing unit GPU A specialized logic chip that is dedicated to quickly displaying and calculating visual data such as shadows textures and luminosity Hard drive A device that holds all permanently stored programs and data can be located inside the system unit or attached to the system unit via a USB port Head crash Impact of read write head against magnetic platter of the hard drive often results in data loss 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 Kernel memory The memory that the computer s operating system uses Latency The process that occurs after the read write head of the hard drive locates the correct track and then waits for the correct sector to spin to the read write head Memory module memory card A small circuit board that holds a series of random access memory RAM chips 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 two years Nonvolatile storage Permanent storage as in read only memory ROM Optical drive A hardware device that uses lasers or light to read from and maybe even write to CDs DVDs or Blu ray discs Physical memory The amount of random access memory RAM that is installed in a computer Platter A thin round metallic storage plate stacked onto the hard drive spindle Random access memory RAM The computer s temporary storage space or short term memory It is located in a set of chips on the system unit s motherboard and its capacity is measured in megabytes or gigabytes Read write head The mechanism that retrieves reads and records writes the magnetic data to and from a data disk Redundant array of independent disks RAID A set of strategies for using more than one drive in a system Serial Advanced Technology Attachment Serial ATA A type of hard drive that uses much thinner cables and can transfer data more quickly than IDE drives Sector A section of a hard drive platter wedge shaped from the center of the platter to the edge Seek time The time it takes for the hard drive s read write heads to move over the surface of the disk to the correct track Solid state drive SSD A storage device that uses the same kind of memory that flash drives use but can reach data in only a tenth of the time a flash drive requires Sound card An expansion card that attaches to the motherboard inside the system unit and that enables the computer to produce sounds by providing a connection for the speakers and microphone SuperFetch A memory management technique used by Windows 7 Monitors the applications you use the most and preloads them into your system memory so that they ll be ready to go Surround sound A type of audio processing that makes the listener experience sound as if it were coming from all directions System evaluation The process of looking at a computer s subsystems what they do and how they perform to determine whether the computer system has the right hardware components to do what the user ultimately wants it to do Track A concentric circle that serves as a storage area on a hard drive platter Video card video adapter An expansion card that is installed inside a system unit to translate binary data the 1s and 0s the computer uses into the images viewed on the monitor Video memory RAM that is included as part of a video card Volatile storage Temporary storage such as in random access memory RAM When the power is off the data in volatile storage is cleared out Ch 7 backward compatibility The accommodation of current devices being able to use previously issued software standards in addition to the current standards bandwidth data transfer rate The maximum speed at which data can be transmitted between two nodes on a network usually measured in megabits per second Mbps See also data transfer rate broadband A high speed Internet connection such as cable satellite or digital subscriber line DSL Cat 6 cable A UTP cable type that provides more than 1 GB of throughput client A computer that requests information from a server in a client server network such as your computer when you are connected to the Internet client server model A way of describing typical network functions Client computers such as your desktop PC request services and servers provide serve up those services to the clients coaxial cable A single copper wire surrounded by layers of plastic insulation and sheathing used mainly in cable television and cable Internet service data transfer rate bandwidth The maximum speed at which data can be transmitted between two nodes on a network usually measured in megabits per second Mbps digital subscriber line DSL A type of connection that uses telephone lines to connect to the Internet and that allows both phone and data transmissions to share the same line Ethernet network A network that uses the Ethernet protocol as the means or standard by which the nodes on the network communicate fiber optic cable A cable that transmits data at close to the speed of light along glass or plastic fibers fiber
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