Last modified: Mon Jul 7 15:19:50 EDT 2008
Wikipedia is a good source for identifying many PC technology terms. The relevant pages are constantly under construction, and the following links will go bad as soon as I add them, but here are the topics on which I find Wikipedia to be most useful.
| 1394 | See IEEE 1394. |
| ACPI | Advanced Configuration & Power Interface. Incorporates APM. |
| AGP | (graphics card / motherboard) Accelerated Graphics Port, an interface that was obsoleted by PCI-E for no apparent reason. 4x = 1 GB/s; 8x = 2 GB/s. |
| AGP Pro | Oddball interface, avoid. |
| AHCI | Advanced Host Controller Interface, a SATA enhancement. Enabling AHCI in BIOS setup without first installing special drivers for Windows XP will kill the installation. C.f. APIC. |
| AMD64 | CPU feature that allows "real" 64-bit addressing. Unlike the "fake" 64-bit addressing of PAE, the memory space of a given process is not limited to 4 GiB. |
| APFC | (Power supply feature) Active Power Factor Correction, reduces electrical load and interference with other devices in house. |
| APIC | Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller. Local APIC (LAPIC) is a good thing to enable in BIOS setup, but enabling it after Windows XP has been installed can kill the installation. C.f. AHCI. |
| APM | Advanced Power Management. Ready, stand-by, suspended, hibernation, off. |
| AT | (1) An obsolete form factor, not compatible with ATX. (2) The old IBM architecture that is ancestor to all modern PCs. (PC begat XT, and XT begat AT, and AT begat everybody.) |
| ATA | (AT Attachment) See PATA and SATA. |
| ATAPI | (AT Attachment Packet Interface) See PATA. |
| Athlon 64 | AMD's single-core desktop processor. |
| Athlon 64 EE/SS | Athlon 64 that functions at lower voltage. |
| Athlon 64 FX | AMD's [F-ing X-pensive] gaming processor, single or dual-core. |
| Athlon 64 X2 | AMD's dual-core desktop processor. |
| Athlon 64 X2 EE | Athlon 64 X2 that functions at lower voltage. |
| Athlon XP | Obsolete AMD desktop processor. |
| ATX | (1) The standard tower case type / form factor. Cases are generically described as full tower, mid tower and mini tower, but this tells you nothing except general size. The benchmark is motherboard compatibility, which will be ATX (sometimes with measurements), Mini-ATX, MicroATX, or Flex ATX. (2) A PSU standard. |
| Baby AT | An obsolete form factor that is not quite the same as mini-AT. |
| BTX | A new tower case type providing better airflow than ATX. Doesn't seem to be catching on. |
| CCFL | Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp. |
| Celeron | Intel's "budget" processor. Avoid. |
| COA | (Microsoft) Certificate of Authenticity / Authority, the dinky paper thing with the license key that allows you to install Microsoft software. |
| Core 2 Duo | Intel's regular 2-core processor, available in both desktop (Socket T) and laptop (FCPGA6) applications. |
| Core 2 Extreme | Intel's extra-expensive gaming processor. Older are 2-core; latest are 4-core. |
| Core 2 Quad | Intel's regular 4-core processor. |
| Core Duo | Obsolete Intel dual-core laptop processor. |
| Core Solo | Obsolete Intel single-core laptop processor. |
| CPU | Central Processing Unit (duh). See also GPU. |
| CrossFire | ATI's response to nVidia's SLI. All three of the gamers who went with ATI over nVidia now buy two graphics cards each. |
| DDR | Double Data Rate, a kind of memory. |
| DDR2 | Double Data Rate 2, a kind of memory. |
| DDR3 | Double Data Rate 3, a kind of memory. |
| DIMM | Dual In-line Memory Module. 168-pin SDR, 184-pin DDR, 240-pin DDR2, and 240-pin DDR3 SDRAM memories are all DIMMs. See also SIMM. |
| DSP | Delivery Service Partner, a term once used by Microsoft to mean OEM system builder. |
| D-Sub | Generic term for a generic connector type misused to refer specifically to the standard old analog VGA connector. |
| Duron | AMD "budget" processor obsoleted by Sempron. Avoid. |
| DVD-R/RW | Burnable DVD formats blessed by the DVD Forum (formerly known as the DVD Consortium). See DVD+R/RW for comparison. |
| DVD+R/RW | Burnable DVD formats blessed by the DVD+RW Alliance. The fact that DVD+R/RW disk capacities are well-specified instead of just "at least 4.7 GB" is a minor technical advantage versus DVD-R/RW. Also, Dell has been known to ship optical drives that are crippled in firmware so that they will only burn DVD+R/RW. Otherwise, DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW are equivalent in all practical respects. |
| DVD+R9 | Same as DVD+R dual layer. |
| DVI | (Digital Visual Interface) The plug that replaced the standard old analog VGA connector. |
| EAX | (Environmental Audio Extensions) A foo-foo sound card feature that might work in a few video games. |
| EIDE | See PATA. |
| EISA | Extended ISA, a 32-bit extension of ISA that is backward-compatible to ISA. See ISA. |
| EM64T | Extended Memory 64-bit Technology, one of Intel's previous names for what they now call Intel 64. |
| EPP | (Extended Performance Profile) nVidia's version of XMP, an extension of SPD for overclocking. |
| eSATA | (External SATA) A version of SATA designed for use in a manner comparable to USB and IEEE 1394. |
| ExpressCard | Laptop expansion card interface. Obsoletes PC Card / CardBus. |
| FCPGA6 | Intel laptop CPU interface. See also Socket 479. |
| FireWire | Apple proprietary name for IEEE 1394. |
| Flex ATX | A shrunken ATX form factor. See also Mini-ATX, MicroATX. |
| GPU | Graphics Processing Unit, a chip installed on modern graphics cards to make them cost more. |
| Hardware RAID | RAID such that all mapping is done by a dedicated controller and there is no need for any special drivers or operating system configuration. As far as the operating system knows, it's just a hard drive. Preferable to Software RAID. |
| HDD | (Hard Disk Drive) Hard drive. |
| HDR | (High Dynamic Range) (1) A foo-foo GPU feature that might work in a few video games. (2) A research-stage LCD monitor technology for increasing contrast. |
| HT | (1) HyperTransport. (2) Hyperthreading. (3) Home Theater. |
| HTPC | Home Theater PC. |
| Hyperthreading | Feature of some Intel CPUs that allows a single core to represent itself to the operating system as two cores and juggle two concurrent threads to achieve higher CPU utilization. It was available during the Pentium 4 era, disappeared as multicore CPUs became the norm, and reportedly will return in 2008 with Nehalem CPUs. |
| HyperTransport | Bus. |
| IDE | Most common way to refer to PATA. |
| IEEE 1394 | A peripheral connection standard that competed poorly with USB and is dying a slow death. |
| IGP | (Integrated Graphics Processor) Processor for graphics support integrated with mobo chipset. |
| Intel 64 | Intel's current name for their implementation of AMD64. |
| ISA | The old AT bus that nobody supports anymore. |
| Itanium | One of Intel's server processors. The other is Xeon. |
| JBOD | Just a Bunch of Disks; multiple volumes are concatenated to make one large volume with no striping or mirroring. Unlike RAID 0, the volumes can be different sizes. |
| KVM | Keyboard, Video & Mouse. |
| LGA 775 | Same as Socket T. |
| Matrix RAID | Hybrid of RAID 0 and RAID 1; some stuff striped, other stuff mirrored. |
| MCP | (Media and Communications Processor) What nVidia calls the southbridge in their nForce chipset. C.f. SPP. |
| MicroATX / µATX | A shrunken ATX form factor that is not quite the same as Mini-ATX. |
| Mini-ATX | A shrunken ATX form factor that is not quite the same as MicroATX. Mobos are no longer available in this form factor. |
| mini-AT | An obsolete form factor that is not quite the same as Baby AT. |
| mini-ITX | Smallest form factor for which you can buy case and mobo separately. Mobo is 17 cm × 17 cm. See also pico-ITX. |
| mobo | (like mofo) Motherboard. |
| mPGA478 | Same as Socket 478. |
| OEM | Original Equipment Manufacturer. Narrowly interpreted, OEM versions of software or hardware are only available to large retailers like Dell; however, software versions intended for use by independent "system builders" are usually also described as OEM software. Microsoft licensing requires retailers to sell OEM versions of Microsoft products only in conjunction with hardware components that are essential to building a new system. OEM versions of Windows are a fraction of the price of retail versions, but Windows Activation permanently locks them to a specific hardware configuration so that the software can never be moved to another PC, nor even used on the same PC after a significant hardware change. Older versions such as Windows 98 did not have this "feature." |
| Opteron | AMD's server processor. |
| PAE | Physical Address Extension, a CPU feature that allows addressing of up to 64 GiB of memory on a 32-bit architecture. The memory space of a given process still cannot exceed 4 GiB. This feature has been available in Intel processors since the Pentium Pro (circa 1996) and is now required for certain Linux memory optimizations to work. |
| PAT | Parallel Address Translation, a minor optimization of memory access speed. |
| PATA | (hard drive) Parallel ATA, the underlying spec of IDE / EIDE, notable for clunky, wide ribbon cables and master/slave cable sharing. As of 2006-07, PATA is dying a slow death as it is obsoleted by SATA. The only thing keeping it alive is the mysterious unavailability of SATA optical drives. See also Ultra DMA. Maxes out at 133 MHz. |
| PCI | (Peripheral Component Interconnect) 64-bit parallel bus, comes in 33 MHz and 66 MHz flavors. |
| PCI-E | (graphics card / motherboard) PCI-Express, an interface that succeeded in obsoleting AGP 8x even though there was no performance benefit in doing so. PCI-E 16x (16 slot) = 4 GB/s, but the bottleneck is elsewhere. |
| PCI-E 2.0 | Backward-compatible doubling of PCI-E bandwidth. |
| PCI-X | 64-bit PCI run at 133 MHz. |
| PEG | PCI-Express Graphics. |
| Pentium D | Obsolete Intel dual-core desktop processor without Hyperthreading. |
| Pentium Dual-Core | Misleadingly named Core 2-based processor with less cache. |
| Pentium EE | Obsolete Intel [Extremely Expensive] dual-core gaming processor with Hyperthreading (total of 4 threads). |
| Pentium M | Obsolete Intel laptop processor. |
| Pentium 4 | Obsolete Intel single-core desktop processor. |
| Pentium 4 EE | Obsolete Intel [Extremely Expensive] single-core gaming processor. |
| PFC | (Power supply feature) Power Factor Correction, see APFC. |
| pico-ITX | Smallest of the small form factors. A complete pico-ITX system can fit into a 5¼″ drive bay. |
| PIO | Programmed I/O, slow legacy PATA mode. |
| PSU | Power Supply Unit. |
| RAID | Redundant Array of Independent or Inexpensive Disks. Comes in Hardware RAID and Software RAID flavors. See RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, RAID 5, RAID 10, Matrix RAID, and JBOD regarding the different ways of combining volumes. |
| RAID 0 | Striping for performance. The volumes have to be the same size. |
| RAID 0+1 | Mirroring (RAID 1) of striped volumes (RAID 0). |
| RAID 1 | Mirroring for redundancy. |
| RAID 5 | Striping plus parity for some fault tolerance. |
| RAID 10 | Striping (RAID 0) of mirrored volumes (RAID 1). |
| RAID 0/1/0+1/5/10 Matrix/JBOD | Indicates support for lots of different RAID types. See RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, RAID 5, RAID 10, Matrix RAID, JBOD. |
| RoHS | Restriction of Hazardous Substances, an EU environmental directive that is causing a lot of heartburn. |
| SATA | (hard drive) Serial ATA, competitor for PATA with smaller cables. Currently, there is no impact on I/O performance vs. PATA—the bottleneck is elsewhere. However, SATA has the advantage of avoiding the IDE master/slave cable-sharing arrangement and freeing up IDE slots for other devices. |
| SATA/150 or SATA-150 | See SATA 1.5 Gb/s. |
| SATA/300 or SATA-300 | See SATA 3.0 Gb/s. |
| SATA 1.5 Gb/s | First generation SATA, 1.5 GHz yielding transfer rate of 150 MB/s. |
| SATA 3.0 Gb/s | Second generation SATA, 3.0 GHz yielding transfer rate of 300 MB/s. |
| SATA 6.0 Gb/s | Third generation SATA, 6.0 GHz yielding transfer rate of 600 MB/s. As of 2007-11 this is still vapor. |
| SATA II | Deprecated misnomer for SATA 3.0 Gb/s. |
| SDR | Single Data Rate, a kind of memory. |
| SDRAM | Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory. |
| SECC | (Cases) Steel. |
| Sempron | AMD's "budget" processor. Avoid. |
| SIMM | Single In-line Memory Module, a type of memory module used in older PCs. See also DIMM. |
| SLI | (Scalable Link Interface) nVidia marketing innovation that causes gamers to buy twice as many graphics cards as before. The ATI version is called CrossFire. |
| Socket A | Obsolete AMD CPU interface. |
| Socket AM2 | AMD desktop CPU interface. |
| Socket AM2+ | Incrementally improved AMD desktop CPU interface that is backward-compatible with Socket AM2 CPUs. An AM2+ CPU in an AM2+ mobo runs HyperTransport at 2 GHz instead of only 1 GHz. |
| Socket F | AMD server / enthusiast CPU interface. |
| Socket S1 | AMD laptop CPU interface. |
| Socket T | Intel desktop CPU interface. |
| Socket 462 | Same as Socket A. |
| Socket 478 | Obsolete Intel CPU interface. |
| Socket 479 | Obsolete Pentium M-specific socket. Note: The FCPGA6 socket also has 479 pins and has been referred to as Socket 479, but the two are not compatible. |
| Socket 604 | Xeon-specific socket. |
| Socket 754 | Obsolete AMD CPU interface. |
| Socket 775 | Same as Socket T. |
| Socket 939 | Obsolete AMD CPU interface. |
| Socket 940 | Oddball AMD CPU interface that requires registered memory. Avoid. |
| Socket 1207 | Same as Socket F. |
| Software RAID | RAID that only works if you install a driver or configure the operating system to do the work. The RAID that comes with the mobo is always software RAID. (N.B., as of 2006-07, Wikipedia reserves the term "software RAID" for RAID that is implemented entirely in the operating system, while the approach used in mobos, where there is BIOS support and a driver, is called "fakeraid." I have not seen the term fakeraid used in practice; both cases are simply called software RAID.) |
| SPD | (Serial Presence Detect) A way for memory modules to inform the mobo chipset of what timings they support. |
| SPP | (System Platform Processor) What nVidia calls the northbridge in their nForce chipset. C.f. MCP. |
| SPP 100 | Yet another new and different interface. This is an external parallel port of some sort. |
| SSD | (Solid State Disk/Drive) Flash memory with a PATA or SATA interface so as to replace an HDD. Currently these are crazy-expensive and only available in laptop form factors. |
| Turion 64 | AMD's laptop processor. |
| Ultra/ATA XX | Popular way of specifying Ultra DMA bandwidth (XX MHz) instead of mode number. See Ultra DMA. |
| Ultra DMA | Fast PATA mode. Ultra DMA mode 2 = Ultra/ATA 33; Ultra DMA mode 4 = Ultra/ATA 66; Ultra DMA mode 5 = Ultra/ATA 100. |
| USB | (Universal Serial Bus) The peripheral connection standard that obsoleted 9-pin serial and 25-pin parallel ports. Interoperability of USB devices is generally good but not as reliable as the old standards. |
| VFD | (Vacuum Fluorescent Display) The sort of display that produces the bright numbers on the front of VCRs, DVD players, microwave ovens, etc.; now available on HTPC cases. |
| VGA | (Video Graphics Array) Base standard to which all modern graphics cards conform. (CGA begat EGA, and EGA begat VGA, and VGA begat everybody.) VGA brought us the D-Sub connector that reigned uncontested until the introduction of DVI. |
| VLB | VESA Local Bus, a short-lived successor to ISA that was backward-compatible to ISA cards. |
| VRM | (Voltage Regulator Module) Yet another mobo component that suddenly needs a heat sink to avoid bursting into flames. |
| VSB | (PSU ratings) Volts StandBy, which is similar to flea power. A specification reading +5VSB@2A means that 2 amps will be available on some +5 volt connector even when the PSU is "off." |
| Xeon | One of Intel's server processors. The other is Itanium. |
| XMP | (Extreme Memory Profiles) Intel's version of EPP, an extension of SPD for overclocking. |