Posts About Hardware

Computers are wonders of modern technology. They’re able to perform billions of operations per second thanks to silicon wafers, which are perhaps even more of a marvel of technology. Despite this, modern devices would be severely hamstrung if they could not communicate with other computers. Digital communications are a cornerstone of the contemporary world. … [Read more...] about What Is a Communication Device?

Processing power is key to the performance of the software. You’ll probably quickly notice the big jump in performance when upgrading to a new computer from one a few years old. Moore’s law describes that the transistor count in CPUs has been doubling roughly every two years since the CPU was first invented. This has led to a consistent increase in computing power, driving a … [Read more...] about What Is a Server Farm?

If you’ve ever gone through the settings on your home router, we’d recommend you do, as some can come with insecure default settings and passwords. You may have noticed a feature called MAC filtering or something similar. You’d be forgiven for assuming that this setting prevented Apple’s Macs from connecting to your network or restricted it so only Macs could connect to your … [Read more...] about What Is a MAC Address?

Early computers were entirely sequential. Each instruction the processor received needed to be completed in full in order before the next one could be started. There are five stages to most instructions: Instruction fetch, Instruction decode, Execute, Memory access, and Writeback. Respectively these stages get the instruction that needs to be completed, separate the operation … [Read more...] about What Is Superscalar?

A standard CPU has three core parts. These are the substrate, the CPU die, and the IHS. The substrate is the PCB on which the rest of the CPU is placed. It has the CPU socket connector pins on its underside. The CPU die is the actual CPU. It’s precisely etched silicon that performs the processing. The CPU die also features the CPU cache tiers directly integrated to minimise … [Read more...] about What Is an Interposer?

In the real world, a mirror is an object that reflects a copy of whatever is in front of it. In the digital world, there are several definitions for mirroring. The primary usage is to describe a site that legitimately hosts copies of software. There is also port mirroring and disk mirroring, though these are less common usages. … [Read more...] about What Is a Data Mirroring?

An access log is a log file that tracks when one or more things were accessed. Access logs are an essential part of security and analytics in computing. Access logs are also an important security and safety tool in the physical world. … [Read more...] about What Is an Access Log?

Suppose you’ve ever played a competitive video game and have won games. In that case, you’ll probably have seen your opponent blame “lag” for their loss. Lag is one form of latency. Though it’s not technically the most authentic form, as latency can have multiple definitions. … [Read more...] about What Is Latency?

You’ve probably seen the bandwidth advertised if you’ve ever shopped for a new internet connection. You’ve probably seen your actual measured bandwidth if you’ve performed an internet speed test. While it’s evident that higher numbers are better, it can be a little unclear precisely what bandwidth is if you’re not all that familiar with the terminology. … [Read more...] about What Is Bandwidth?

While your requirements for a home or work computer might seem reasonable. Or even high-end, depending on your use case, it simply doesn’t compare to the processing power and storage capacity needed by large companies. Even a reasonably sized company will have data storage requirements in the dozens to hundreds of terabytes. … [Read more...] about What Is a Data Center?