DDR3 SDRAM (Double Data Rate Three Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory) is the third generation of DDR SDRAM. DDR3 SDRAM improves on DDR2 SDRAM in several significant ways: Higher bandwidth due to increased clock rate Reduced power consumption due to 90mm fabrication technology Pre-fetch buffer is doubled to 8 bits to further increase performance The voltage of DDR3 SDRAM DIMMs was lowered from 1.8V to 1.5V. This reduces power consumption and heat generation, as well as enabling more dense memory configurations for higher capacities. Standard DDR3 SDRAM DIMM's DDR3 SDRAM Read More

One of the best modes of enjoying audio and visual recordings is through the DVD. It is common for you to pay for a compact disc at exorbitant prices you would hardly imagine. But it is sure that the quality of what you get is far more when compared to the price you pay. While facing the trouble posed by scratched DVDs seem frustrating, there is virtually no way in which scratches on your DVD can be guarded against. Scratches on your DVD should not signal an end to that Read More

A cable tester is an electronic device that is used to verify that a cable connection is reliable. Cable testers are often used in television and Internet applications to ensure that the customer’s service will function properly once all cables are connected to the appropriate devices. Cable testers can also be used to test electrical wires in houses, car engines, and virtually any device that includes a power cable or other electrical wiring. How Cable Testers Work Cable testers consist of a power source, a switching matrix, as well as Read More

NAND drives are high-capacity, high-speed, solid-state flash memory drives. Thanks to new advances in technology, these drives have been chosen to become the latest drive preference for laptop computers (hopefully in the near future). When comparing the NAND to other types of flash memory, NAND drives have several noteworthy advantages. The term "NAND" refers to the architecture of the chip which differs it from NOR (NOT OR) flash memory. NOR flash memory is most widely used in devices in which small programs are executed in place rather than written to Read More

A codec (Coder/Decoder) converts an analog signal to a digital bitstream, and another identical codec converts the digital bitstream back into an analog signal. Codec's are used to encode audio for storage on digital mediums, such as CD's and computer files. Audio codec's are also used to transmit audio over digital transmission lines, such as SPDIF. Audio Codecs Audio codecs generally fall into two groups, codecs that use lossy compression and those that use lossless compression. Lossy Audio Codecs Audio codecs which use lossy compression include: MP3 AC3 AAC ADPCM Read More

A pneumatic actuator is a device that is capable of converting energy from a pressurized gas into motion. There are several different types of pneumatic actuators and each of them are designed in a slightly different way. Pneumatic actuators can be used to produce both rotary and linear motion and are usually powered by an electric compressor. While motion can be created through other means, such as a hydraulic or electric motor, pneumatic actuators are safer, cheaper, more reliable, and often provide more power. How Pneumatic Actuators Work Pneumatic actuators Read More

Opteron is a name for AMD's line of server-class CPUs. The Opteron line is designed to complete against the Intel Xeon server-class CPUs. Opteron processors are designed to execute 32-bit and 64-bit instuctions simultaneously. This enables them to directly address more than 4GB of RAM. Opteron CPUs feature an L1 cache with 64KB of RAM for data and 64KB of RAM for instructions. The 1024KB L2 cache in an Opteron CPU operates at the full speed of the CPU. These L1 and L2 cache numbers are per core. In a Read More

Flash memory is memory which retains its contents even after power is removed. Flash memory is a form of EAPROM (Electrically Alterable Programmable Read-Only Memory). Each bit of data in a flash memory device is stored in a transistor called a floating gate. The floating gate can only be accessed though another transistor, the control gate. The process the control gate uses to access the floating gate is a field emission phenomenon known as Fowler-Nordheim tunneling. Tunneling allows voltage to flow from the control gate to the floating gate through Read More

HVD (Holographic Versatile Disc) is the next generation in optical disk technology. HVD is still in a research phase that would phenomenally increase the disk storage capacities over the currently existing HD DVD and Blu-ray optical disk systems. According to published statistics, when produced in full scale, HVDs will have a storage capacity of 3.9 terabytes (39,000 GB) and a data transfer rate of 1 GB/s, which is at least six times more than the speed of DVD players. This would, without a doubt, become a giant step in revolutionizing Read More

Registered memory modules have built-in registers on their address and control lines. A register is a very small temporary holding area (usually 64 bits) for data. These registers act as buffers between the CPU and the memory. The use of registered memory increases system reliability, but also slows the system down a very slight bit as data must be moved through the registers. Some systems do not support registered memory, others require registered memory, and many more give you the option to use registered or unregistered memory. The use of Read More