Monday, November 4, 2002		ITerminology

Microcomputer: The term microcomputer is generally synonymous with personal computer (PC), or a computer that depends on a microprocessor. Microcomputers are designed to be used by individuals, whether in the form of PCs, workstations or notebook computers. A microcomputer contains a central processing unit (CPU) on a microchip (the microprocessor), a memory system (typically read-only memory and random access memory), a bus system and I/O ports, typically housed in a motherboard.

Personal information manager: Abbreviated PIM, a type of software application designed to help users organize random bits of information. Although the category is fuzzy, most PIMs enable you to enter various kinds of textual notes — reminders, lists, dates — and to link these bits of information together in useful ways. Many PIMs also include calendar, scheduling, and calculator programs.

I/O throttling: Short for input/output throttling, a technique used to more efficiently handle memory processing. During low-memory conditions, a system will slow down the processing of I/O memory requests, typically processing one sequence at a time in the order the request was received. I/O throttling slows down a system but typically will prevent the system from crashing.

Hyper-threading: A technology that enables multithreaded software applications to execute threads in parallel on a single multi-core processor instead of processing threads in a linear fashion. Older systems took advantage of dual processing threading in software by splitting instructions into multiple streams so that more than one processor could act upon them at once.