Managing Hardware
Christine Bresnahan, Richard Blum · 2012
This chapter describes how to perform basic management tasks with your hardware. CPU manufacturers tend to create product lines by making regular improvements to their products. Improvements range from minor (such as running the CPU at a faster clock rate , which is like running an engine at a faster speed) to moderate redesigns to improve speed (which is like shifting gears to get better speed) to radical redesigns (which are like using a bigger or more efficient engine, but one based on the original design). All these types of changes remain within a single CPU family, so they can run the same code as their predecessors. If the CPU is the computer's brain, the motherboard is the rest of the computer's central nervous system. The motherboard is a large circuit board inside the computer. It's dominated by a chipset , which is one or more chips that t provide key functionality for the computer-they help the CPU interface with the hard disk interfaces, the USB interfaces, the network devices, and so on. Some chipsets include video circuitry for video cards, although this functionality is sometimes separate, and sometimes it's built into the CPU. A computer's power supply takes the alternating current (AC) power from a wall outlet and converts it to the direct current (DC) that your motherboard and everything you plug into it uses. Laptop computers and some small desktop units use power adapter “bricks” that you can put on the floor. Larger desktop computers have internal power supply units. These internal units are larger, both physically and in terms of the amount of power they can deliver.