Factors in Choosing an Oscilloscope
An oscilloscope is an instrument used to display the waveform of electronic signals. It draws a graph of the voltage as a function of time. A digital oscilloscope can also store waveforms and perform mathematical analysis of the waveform. More ...
Processor Affinity in Symmetric Multiprocessing
Processor Affinity refers to a process's tendency to continue running on the processor on which it is currently running. When a process executes on a CPU, that process's cache is populated with its most recently accessed data, if a process is moved to a different CPU, that second processor's cache must be populated with that data. More ...
First-Come, First-Served CPU Scheduling Algorithm
CPU Scheduling deals with the problem of deciding which of the processes in the ready queue is to be alocated the CPU. There are many different CPU scheduling algorithms. In this article we describe first-come, first-served scheduling. More ...
Logical Versus Physical Memory Addresses
Computers use logical and physical addresses to access memory locatiuons. The CPU generates logical addresses. At run-time the Memory Management Unit (MMU) maps logical addresses to physical addresses. More ...
The Fetch, Decode, Execute Cycle
The Fetch, Decode, Execute cycle is paramount to the functioning of a microprocessor. In this article I'll describe the Fetch, Decode, Execute cycle simplified to its bare-bones in a highly simplified fictitious microprocessor. More ...
Capacitors in DC Circuits
A capacitor is a component that can be used to store an electrical charge. A capacitor can be used to create a timer. This time delay can be used to smooth a changing current flow in a circuit, or it can be used to absorb spikes and prevent false triggering of other components. More ...
Load Balancing Multiple CPUs in Symmetric Multiprocessing
On Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) systems it is important to keep the workload balanced among all processors. There are two approaches to accomplish this, push migration and pull migration. More ...
Operating System Memory Paging - Page Table Structure
One method of memory management is to break physical memory into fixed size blocks and break logical memory into same sized blocks called pages. The physical location of pages is tracked by a page table. More ...
CPU Cache Basics
After the processor accesses a location in memory, there's a high probability that the next location in memory that it will access is in the same area of memory. So to make the computer run faster, a a smaller, faster memory called a cache is placed between main memory and the processor. More ...
Microprocessor Counter, Clock, Timer Circuits
All the circuitry in the microprocessor, in fact all the circuitry on the motherboard require a clock signal for operation. The clock signal is the heartbeat of the system. Without a clock signal, the microprocessor and the computer are dead. More ...
Electronic Circuits
There are five types of circuits; open, short, series, parallel, and series-parallel. Using Ohm's law, along with the reciprocal formula to calculate the equivalent resistance of resistors in parallel, you can calculate the voltage or current in any part of a circuit. More ...
Introduction to Boolean Algebra
Boolean algebra is a system of mathematics in which the values of the variables can take on only one of two values, either 0 or 1. Similar to regular algebra, Boolean algebra can be used to simplify a mathematical expression. Since computer logic is also a system in which the values of the inputs and outputs can take on only one of two values, Boolean algebra can be used to simplify logic circuits. More ...
