IT Terms - Hardware

Question 1

BIOS

Answer 1

Basic Input/Output Services (System) - A firmware that directly controls a particular piece of hardware.

Question 2

Bus

Answer 2

Series of wires connecting 2 or more separate electronic devices, enabling those devices to communicate together.

Question 3

Cache

Answer 3

Special section of fast memory, usually built into the CPU used by the onboard logic to store information most frequently accessed by the CPU.

Question 4

Catastrophic Failure

Answer 4

A failure in which a component or whole system will not boot. Could be from manufacturing error, overheating, or physical damage.

Question 5

Clock Cycle

Answer 5

Single charge to the clock wire (CLK) of a CPU, informing the CPU that another piece of information is waiting to be processed.

Question 6

Clock Speed

Answer 6

The maximum number of clock cycles that a CPU can handle in a given period of time, measured in MHz or GHz

Question 7

CPU

Answer 7

Central Processing Unit - the “brain” of the computer. Microprocessors that handles primary calculation for the computer.

Question 8

DIMM

Answer 8

Dual Inline Memory Module - used in RAM