CompTIA A+ 1

system board or planar board

basic input output system

Advanced Technology Extended motherboard

• processor and slots at right anles to expansion cards
• runs cooler
• can have full length expansion cards

• enhanced cooling but smaller footprint
• sacrifice quantity of slots, mods, etc.
• lower wattage

New Low-profile Extended

• x slots on a special riser card
• use reduced vertical space optimally
• adapter cards plug in parallel to motherboard

adapter card

Balance Technology Extended

• line up heat producers with air intake and exhaust fan
• CPU and components cooled by passive heat sinks

collection of chips/circuits that perform interface and peripheral functions for the processor

• manages high-speed peripheral communications
• integrated video and processor to memory
• manages communication between Southbridge and rest of computer
• data "traffic cop"

Front Side Bus

signal pathways between CPU and main memory

signal pathways between CPU and Level 2 cache memory

• manages communications between peripherals and the rest of the computer
• including expasion buses
• also includes LAN, audio, infrared, and FireWire

PS/2, Parallel, IDE, etc.

PCI, USB, legacy buses (Serial)

• Industry Standard Architecture
• pre 1997
• black
• shorter part and longer part

• Peripheral Component Interconnect
• 3" long and white
• Pentium-class or higher

• Accelerated Graphics Port
• for 3D graphics
• direct connect btwn vid circuitry and PC's mem
• brown and shorter than PCI

• PCI Express
• Faster than AGP
• flexible like PCI
• maintain PCI for backwards compatibility
• 7 speeds cooresponding to lengths
• 1X, 2X, 4X, 8X, 12X, 16X, 32X

• multiple units of communication between 2 PCIe components
• directly related to physical wiring of the bus
• can plug smaller card into larger slot

• Audio Moden Riser
• 46 pin slot
• audio and modem could be certified seperately

• Communications and Networking Riser
• 60 pin slot
• integrated board with possiblity for enhancement
• network, Plug and Play, hardware excelleration

used to store (RAM) currently used data and instructions for the CPU

• Dual Inline Memory Modules
• used in PCs
• differ in the number of pins
• 168-, 184-, 240-

• Small Outline DIMMs
• used in laptops

• Virtual RAM
• hard drive space used to deliver information to RAM faster

• very fast form of memory forged from static RAM
• predicts what the CPU wants next and pre-fetches it
• only the most recent info
• external cache or Level 2 (L2) cache

flat with several rows of holes arranged in a square

• Pin Array Cartridge
• works on very low insertion force (VLIP) principle
• eg.: Intel Itanium

• Integrated Drive Electronics
• aka ATA
• upper limit of 528MB per logical drive

• Advanced Technology Attachment
• aka IDE
• upper limit of 528MB per logical drive

• Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics
• upper limit of 8GB per logical drive
• increased to 144PB
• (PB = petabyte = 2^50)

• Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment
• 40-pin header

• Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
• Higher data throughput than parallelATA

• Keyboard connector
• 6-pin mini-DIN

• allows you to mount the ports to the computer's case
• on the backpane
• uses a special cable called a header

male connector that terminates the motherboard's traces for that function

• mostly used in integrated motherboards
• no cables
• port is part of the mb
• ports can be disabled in BIOS setup

• Basic Input/Output System chip
• contains software
• tells processor how to interact with the rest of the hardware in the computer

• Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor chip
• parameter memory for the BIOS
• saves date, time, hard drive config, and memory when computer is unplugged
• powered by watch-sized battery

used to configure various hardware options on the mb

• software that is encoded into a read-only memory chiop
• can be run with out extra instruction for the OS
• Ex.: CMOS setup program

• Pin Grid Array
• processor socket

• Single Edge Contact Cartridge
• PGA-type socket on a special expansion card

• appear to the OS as two processors
• can schedule two precesses at the same time

able to have multiple instructions operating on separate data in parallel

• has two completely separate processors in the same package
• OSs can treat the single processor as if it were two separate processors
• must support SMP
• apps must be written for parrallel processing
• Ex.: Dual-core

• Symmetric Multiproccessing
• two or more processors use the same system resources

• aka, clamping
• controlling how much CPU time is spent on an app
• treate all apps more fairly
• important for server environments

• set of instructions that make up the various microprograms that the processor executes while carrying out its various duties
• Ex.: Multimedia Extentions (MMX)

• offers increased performance
• must be specially cooled

Located on the CPU

larger and located on the motherboard