How Computer Chips are Made
The oxygen is removed from silica by heating it with carbon. A tiny seed of silicon is then dipped into molten silicon. As the tiny crystal is slowly lifted out of the crucible silicon crystallizes around it. More ...
Monolithic Kernel vs Microkernel vs Hybrid Kernel
An operating system consists of two parts, the kernel space which operates in privileged mode, and the user space which operates in unprivileged mode. More ...
Multiuser Operating System Functions
Some operating system functions like resource allocation, accounting, protection and security exist not for helping the user, but rather for ensuring the efficient operation of the system itself. More ...
Online Color Coded Resistor Calculator
To determine the resistance value of a color-coded resistor, select the colors matching each band from the drop-down lists. More ...
The AMD Athlon 64 X2 Processor
The Athlon 64 X2 is the first dual-core CPU manufactured by AMD.
It is essentially two Athlon 64 cores on one die joined together with additional control logic. The cores share one dual-channel memory controller. The benefit of dual-core processors is their ability to process more software threads at the same time. However, many programs are written with only one thread. More ...
Pi-Top kit - Build Your Own Laptop
Computer hobbyists has been building their own desktop computers since the mid 1980's, but I know of no laptop kits, until now. The Pi-Top is a kit that lets you build your own laptop. 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 ...
The Microcontroller's Asynchronous Serial Interface
An Asynchronous Serial Interface sends data one bit at a time, as apposed to a parallel interface which send one byte or one word at a time, and asynchronous means it sends them when its ready, without reference to a clock signal. More ...
The Computer's Chipset
A computers memory and peripheral ports connect through two highly integrated chips called simply the chipset. The chipset consists of a northbridge chip and a southbridge chip. More ...
Computer Video Display
If you view a computer as an input-processing-output machine, you can use a keyboard or removable storage device as the input, a program as the processing, but what can you use to retrieve the output? One way to acquire the output, be it text or graphics, is with a video display. More ...
Intel's Sandy Bridge Micro-Architecture
"Sandy Bridge" is Intel's code name for a new cpu core microarchitecture. It introduces a few new or improved features. The memory controller, the PCI Express controller, and video circuitry are all located within the processor die and the new ring architecture uses a Last Level Cache between the CPU and graphics cores. More ...
CPU Chip Packaging
Over the development time of the computer, several different designs of packaging for the CPU chip die have been used. Each type of packaging has its advantages and disadvantages. This article reviews some common packages that might still be in use. More ...
