Unit 6 – Assessing Hardware and Software

Question 1

• Depicts the speed at which the CPUs are improving (growing) over time
• Number of transistors inside a CPU increase so quickly that CPU capacity will double every 2
  years
• Cost of buying and upgrading is impacted by rapid growth
• Computers last at least 2 years → 4 or 5 is upper limit

Answer 1

Moore’s Law

Question 2

Starts new instructions before the last set has finished

Answer 2

Hyper threading:

Question 3

Pushing hardware to perform faster than what the manufacturer recommends (exceeding
the limits)

Answer 3

Over clocking:

Question 4

Small circuit boards that hold ram chips that are in turn fastened to the motherboard

Answer 4

Memory Modules (Memory Cards):

Question 5

The actual amount of RAM on your computer

Answer 5

Physical Memory

Question 6

Part of the Task Manager in Windows where you can track how much memory is being used over time

Answer 6

Resource Monitor:

Question 8

Windows feature that monitors applications that you use frequently and preloads portions of it into RAM (anticipates usage) → preemptively open your applications (Example: Outlook at work)

Answer 8

SuperFetch

Question 9

Evaluating Storage

 Moving parts
 Max Storage: Around 4 TB
Platter: Round thin plates inside the HDD housing magnetized spots that represent data Access Time: The time it takes to find the data on the HDD

Answer 9

Mechanical Hard Drives (HDD)

Question 10

Evaluating Storage

•  No moving parts, no noise, little heat, less power
•  Max storage: Around 4 TB (but very expensive)
•  Faster access time (100x faster than HDD)
•  Allows computer to start faster → many computers put the OS on an SSD

Answer 10

Solid State Drives (SSD)

Question 11

Evaluating Storage

•  Small amount of SSD space (around 8GB) combined with typical HDD
•  Used to improve boot time

Answer 11

Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSHD)

Question 12

Evaluating Storage

•  Use lasers to store and read data on optical media (Examples: CD, DVD, Blu-ray)
•  Prerecorded: you can’t change it (ROM) → CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, BD-ROMO
•  Recordable: CD-R, DVD-R, BD-R
•  Rewritable: CD-RW, DVD-RW, BD-RW
•  Less common, especially in portable devices

Answer 12

Optical Drives

Question 13

echnology that allows you to combine multiple hard
disks and use them as one

Answer 13

Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID):

RAID 0: Twice as fast to read/write to disk 9spreads it across 2 disks)
 RAID 1: All data is written to one drive and mirrored to the second