Drive bayA drive bay is a standard-sized area for adding hardware to a computer. Most drive bays are fixed to the inside of a case, but some can be removed. Over the years since the introduction of the IBM PC, it and its compatibles have had many form factors of drive bays. Four form factors are in common use today, the 5.25-inch, 3.5-inch, 2.5-inch or 1.8-inch drive bays. These names do not refer to the width of the bay itself, but rather to the width of the disks used by the drives mounted in these bays. 8.
Glossary of computer graphicsThis is a glossary of terms relating to computer graphics. For more general computer hardware terms, see glossary of computer hardware terms.
Memory access patternIn computing, a memory access pattern or IO access pattern is the pattern with which a system or program reads and writes memory on secondary storage. These patterns differ in the level of locality of reference and drastically affect cache performance, and also have implications for the approach to parallelism and distribution of workload in shared memory systems. Further, cache coherency issues can affect multiprocessor performance, which means that certain memory access patterns place a ceiling on parallelism (which manycore approaches seek to break).
Computer caseA computer case, also known as a computer chassis, is the enclosure that contains most of the hardware of a personal computer. The components housed inside the case (such as the CPU, motherboard, memory, mass storage devices, power supply unit and various expansion cards) are referred as the internal hardware, while hardware outside the case (typically cable-linked or plug-and-play devices such as the display, speakers, keyboard, mouse and USB flash drives) are known as peripherals.
Network on a chipA network on a chip or network-on-chip (NoC ˌɛnˌoʊˈsiː or nɒk ) is a network-based communications subsystem on an integrated circuit ("microchip"), most typically between modules in a system on a chip (SoC). The modules on the IC are typically semiconductor IP cores schematizing various functions of the computer system, and are designed to be modular in the sense of network science. The network on chip is a router-based packet switching network between SoC modules.
Computer hardwareComputer hardware includes the physical parts of a computer, such as the case, central processing unit (CPU), random access memory (RAM), monitor, mouse, keyboard, computer data storage, graphics card, sound card, speakers and motherboard. By contrast, software is the set of instructions that can be stored and run by hardware. Hardware is so-termed because it is "hard" or rigid with respect to changes, whereas software is "soft" because it is easy to change. Hardware is typically directed by the software to execute any command or instruction.
