The System Unit

FLASH MEMORY

Flash memory is a type of constantly-powered nonvolatile memory that can be erased and reprogrammed in units of memory called blocks. It is a variation of electrically erasable programmable read-only memory which, unlike flash memory, is erased and rewritten at the byte level, which is slower than flash memory updating

GRAPHIC CARDS

A graphic card is a piece of hardware installed in a computer that is responsible for rendering the image on the computer’s monitor or display screen. Graphics cards help take the processing strain off the main processor, and can contain their own memory to take the strain off the system RAM.

SOUND CARDS

An expansion board that enables a computer to manipulate and output sounds. Sound cards are necessary for nearly all CD-ROMs and have become commonplace on modern personal computers. Sound cards enable the computer to output sound through speakers connected to the board, to record sound input from a microphone connected to the computer, and manipulate sound stored on a disk.

NETWORK INTERFACE CARD (NIC)

A network interface card, more commonly referred to as a NIC, is a device that allows computers to be joined together in a LAN, or local area network. Networked computers communicate with each other using a given protocol or agreed-upon language for transmitting data packets between the different machines, known as nodes. 

PLUG AND PLAY

Plug and Play is a capability developed by Microsoft for its Windows 95 and later operating systems that gives users the ability to plug a device into a computer and have the computer recognize that the device is there. In many earlier computer systems, the user was required to explicitly tell the operating system when a new device had been added. 

BUS LINE

In computer architecture, a bus is a subsystem that transfers data between computer components inside a computer or between computers. Early computer buses were literally parallel electrical buses with multiple connections, but the term is now used for any physical arrangement that provides the same logical functionality as a parallel electrical bus. 


HDMI

HDMI is an interface standard used for audiovisual equipment such as high-definition television and home theater systems. With 19 wires wrapped in a single cable that resembles a USB wire, HDMI is able to carry a bandwidth of 5 Gbps. This is more than twice the bandwidth needed to transmit multi-channel audio and video, future-proofing HDMI for some time to come.

CACHE MEMORY

Cache memory is random access memory (RAM) that a computer microprocessor can access more quickly than it can access regular RAM. As the microprocessor processes data, it looks first in the cache memory and if it finds the data there, it does not have to do the more time-consuming reading of data from larger memory.