Computing platforms - Dissertation Example

COMPUTING PLATFORMS Choosing the right motherboard to suite one’s personal or business needs is quite a challenging task these days. Individuals and businesses have to choose from a variety of brands and latest features before coming up to a decision. The marketing hype of the products makes the decision making even more complex for the prospective buyer who has no knowledge or background in computers. Prospective buyers and users have their own unique needs and priority. Business people prefer stability and reliability. Gamers need speed, good graphics, and high frame rates. The non-enterprising and budget conscious individual needs compatibility, expandability, and cheaper prices. Today, a motherboard has to be reliable and stable enough to meet the various tasks at hand. It also has to be highly compatible, flexible, equipped with a good set of features and finally it should offer good performance (Rouse 2003). Processing power, graphics capabilities and storage capacity are all factors that must be considered carefully when choosing PC systems for the general office (Peters 2005). The intended use, as well as the software and data that will be used should all be put into account. The most general question related to intended use, and the first one the buyer must answer is "What is the general nature of the applications that are expected to run on this computer?"(Morton 1997). The office computers are normally used for several applications, particularly document preparation, data management, report generation, and e-mail. Some of the emerging multimedia applications that are beginning to be used in this environment include document imaging, group work with video and/or audio, and the generation of animated briefings. Depending on the nature of the document images, there may be an impact on the required resolution of the computer display. Group work applications may make use of video teleconferencing, which includes audio communications, or just audio teleconferencing with shared workspaces. Such applications may require special communications networks, as well as cameras, microphones, and the appropriate input and output capabilities in the computer (Morton 1997). General Guidelines in Choosing Motherboards In general, the selection of motherboards for the general office should adhere to the following basic rules: firstly, the motherboards have to come from recognized, easily available brands. Secondly, the motherboard must come with everything the owner need, optional riser cards will not be a good option since no supplier stocks them. Thirdly, preference should be given to motherboards which feature Firewire (IEEE 1394), a very fast external bus standard that supports data transfer rates of up to 400Mbps (in 1394a) and 800Mbps (in 1394b). Products supporting the 1394 standard go under different names, depending on the company. Apple, which originally developed the technology, uses the trademarked name FireWire. Other companies use other names, such as I. link and Lynx, to describe their 1394 products (IEEE 1394 2003). A single 1394 port can be used to connect up 63 external devices. In addition to its high speed, 1394 also supports isochronous data -- delivering data at a guaranteed rate. This makes it ideal for devices that need to transfer high levels of data in real-time, such as video devices (IEEE 1394 2003). Preference should also be given to motherboard with SPDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) connection, a standard audio file transfer format. Developed jointly by the Sony and Phillips corporations, S/PDIF allows the transfer of digital audio signals from one device to another without having to be converted first to an analog format. Maintaining the viability of a digital signal prevents the quality of the signal from degrading when it is converted to analog (SPDIF 2002). The increasing use of digital video cameras means that Firewire is important. Motherboard intended for today’s general office use must have, as minimum, of the following; 1.USB 2.0, short for Universal Serial Bus, is an external bus standard that supports data transfer rates of 12 Mbps. A single USB port can be used to connect up to 127 peripheral devices, such as mice, modems, and keyboards. USB 2.0 is an extension of USB 1.1. USB 2.0 is fully compatible with USB 1.1 and uses the same cables and connectors (USB 2004); 2.LAN (Local-area network) is a computer network that spans a relatively small area. Most LANs are confined to a single building or group of buildings. However, one LAN can be connected to other LANs over any distance via telephone lines and radio waves. (LAN 2003), 3. SATA, often abbreviated SATA or S-ATA, an evolution of the Parallel ATA physical storage interface. Serial ATA is a serial link -- a single cable with a minimum of four wires creates a point-to-point connection between devices. Transfer rates for Serial ATA begin at 150MBps. One of the main design advantages of Serial ATA is that the thinner serial cables facilitate more efficient airflow inside a form factor and also allow for smaller chassis designs. (Serial ATA 2003), 4.AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port), is an interface specification developed by Intel Corporation. AGP is based on PCI, but is designed especially for the throughput demands of 3-D graphics. Rather than using the PCI bus for graphics data, AGP introduces a dedicated point-to-point channel so that the graphics controller can directly access main memory. (AGP 2003). In addition, motherboard should also support 256MB of memory, which is the bare minimum for light office work today. However, a motherboard that can be configured with up to 2GB or 4GB of DDR (Double Data Rate) or DDR2 memory is a plus. DDR offers faster speeds, lower power consumption, and higher bandwidths. The motherboard should also have enough memory slots for future upgrading. Adding to existing memory is better than replacing all the modules to achieve maximum memory capacity. And hard drive of 80GB to 160 GB must be supported (Peters 2005). Amongst the famous motherboard brand today are: 3com, Antec, Aopen, Asus, Gigabyte, Maxtor, Shuttle, Viewsonic, Intel, Logisys, and HP. Intel with its new advance features such as support for Hyper-Threading Technology and Asus’s No.1 Ranking in most user’s survey, could provide the needed reliable performance for the ever demanding task at the general office. The Asus A7V400-MX SE Motherboard One of the commercially available motherboard suitable for the general office use is the A7V400-MX SE by Asus. This is a great value motherboard based on VIA KM400A chipset for socket-A FSB400 Athlon XP/Sempron processors. VIA KM400 Chipset is the next generation integrated graphics chipset for the AMD Athlon XP processor. An ultra fast HyperTransport link to the CPU, integrated UniChrome 2D/3D graphics, AGP 8X port, 8X V-Link, Serial ATA/RAID, ATA-133 and USB 2.0 combine to make the KM400 a feature rich and scalable chipset for mainstream corporate and consumer desktop systems (Via 2005). The Asus A7V400-MX SE motherboard has updated features such as SATA, 6-channel audio, 10/100 LAN, AGP 8X. The motherboard supports 400MHZ> front side bus frequency for AMD’s Athlon processors allowing increased office productivity and enhance digital media experience. Asus’s unique C.O.P. (CPU overheating protection) hardware is incorporated in the unit. This enable the circuit to automatically shut down before temperatures goes high enough to damage the CPU. Asus’s EZ Flash is another feature that let update BIOS before entering operating system. No more DOS-based flash utility and bootable diskette required. Another feature is the CrashFree BIOS which allow users to restore BIOS data from floppy diskette even when BIOS code and data are corrupted during upgrade or invaded by virus. Unlike other competing vendor’s products, Asus motherboards now enable users to enjoy this protection feature without the need to pay for extra ROM. The motherboard is also equipped with SoundMAX Digital Audio System, the industry’s highest performance and most reliable audio solution for business professionals, audiophiles, musicians, and gamers. SoundMAX Audio System can output 5.1 channel surround sound and feature state of the art DLS2 MIDI synthesizer and supports all major game audio technologies. Admirable AMD value-rich solution with SATA comes on board with the A7V400-MX SE (A7V400-MX SE 2005). The Intel® Desktop Board D875PBZ Another currently available motherboard suitable for general use office is the Intel Desktop Board D875PBZ by Intel. Based on Intel 875 chipset, it harnesses the advanced computing power of the latest Intel Pentium 4 processors supporting Hyper-Threading Technology. The Intel® 875P chipset, optimized for the Intel® Pentium® 4 processor supporting Hyper-Threading (HT) Technology, adds intelligence to help manage and prioritize multiple threads received from the microprocessor. Hyper-Threading Technology has enabled greater business productivity and enhanced the customer experience. Faster clock speeds are an important way to deliver more computing power, and Intel has led the way with industry-leading processor frequency. But clock speed is only half the story. The other route to higher performance is to accomplish more work on each clock cycle, and thats where Hyper-Threading Technology comes in. A single processor supporting Hyper-Threading Technology presents itself to modern operating systems and applications as two virtual processors. The processor can work on two sets of tasks simultaneously, use resources that otherwise would sit idle, and get more work done in the same amount of time (Hyper-Threading 2005). The 875P chipset features support for an 800 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB) and implements Intel Performance Acceleration Technology (Intel PAT) with dual-channel DDR 400 memory configurations to get incredible performance from the memory interface (Intel Desktop Board 2005). Intel Performance Acceleration Technology helps to improve performance by reducing memory latencies. The Desktop Board D875PBZ with Intel RAID Technology brings new levels of performance to the desktop by combining support for an 800MHz system bus with dual-channel DDR-400 and native SATA 150. It supports Intel Pentium 4 in a mPGA478 with a 533/800 MHz system bus and Extreme Edition processor in an mPGA478 socket with an 800 MHz system bus and supports DDR 400 and DDR 333 up to 4 GB system memory with four-pin DDR SDRAM DIMM sockets. The Desktop Board D875PBZ comes with the SoundMAX 4 XL with Audio ESP audio subsystem using Analog Devices AD1985 codec and Universal 0.8/1.5 V AGP 3.0 connector (with integrated retention mechanism) supporting 4x and 8x AGP cards. Peripheral interfaces includes: Eight USB 2.0 ports, one serial port, one parallel pot, two Serial ATA IDE interfaces with RAID 0 and RAID 1 support, two parallel ATA IDE interfaces with UDMA 33, ATA-66/100 support, one diskette driveinterface,PS?2 keyboard and mouse ports. Expansion Capabilities: five PCI bus add-in card connectors (Intel Desktop Board 2005). Summary of the Main Features of A7V400-MX SE and Intel Desktop Board D875BZ Features Asus A7V400-MX SE Intel Desktop Board D875PBZ Chipset Via KM400 A chipset Intel 875P chipset Processor Socket AFSB 400 Support Intel Pentium 4 Extreme edition in Athlon xp/Sempron processors an mPGA 478 socket with 800 MHZ system Supports 400 MHZ front bus frequency bus Support Intel Pentium 4 processor in an mPGA 478 socket with 533/800 MHZ system bus Memory Support for DDR 400 and DDR 333 Support for DDR 400 and DDR 333 Audio Soundmax digital audio system 5.1 channel Soundmax 4XL with audio ESP audio surround sound and features DLS2 midi subsystem using the analog devices synthesizer AD 1985 Video AGP 8x (AGP3.0) Universal 0.8/1.5V AGO 3.0 connector VGA interface specifications that enables (with integrated retention mechanism) enhanced graphics performance with supports 4x and 8x AGP cards high bandwidth up to 2.12 GB/s Expansion Five PCI Bus ADD-in card connection Five PCI Bus add-in card connection capabilities Others Asus C.O.P Crashfree Bios Asus EZ Flash Intel Desktop Board D875PBZ: A Better Alternative Both Asus’s A7V400-MX SE and Intel’s Desktop Board D875PBZ have the latest features to support the demands of modern day general office, specifically the USB 2.0, LAN, SATA, AGP x 8 and 6 channel sound. However, Asus’s motherboard has some unique features not found in Intel’s Desktop Board D875PBZ such as the CPU overheating protection hardware, EZ Flash, CrashFree BIOS. One advantage of the Intel Desktop Board D875PBZ is its support for Hyper-Threading Technology. Hyper-Threading Technology is a groundbreaking innovation that significantly improves processor performance throughout the enterprise. Pioneered by Intel on the Intel Xeon processor family for servers, Hyper-Threading enabled desktop and laptop PCs will see an immediate performance impact and increased system responsiveness in todays multitasking environments — up to 25 percent. IT organizations benefit because system performance is maintained while other tasks run transparently in the background. Tasks such as virus checking, e-mail encryption, and file compression run more efficiently, making the overall infrastructure more robust, manageable, and secure. End users enjoy increased system responsiveness because foreground applications execute in less time during multitasking scenarios. In addition, when HT Technology is utilized with Gigabit Ethernet in multitasking workloads, faster networking and data throughput can be experienced, providing greater performance. In servers and high-end workstations, performance analyses show solid improvements in server. Hyper-Threading Technology is now supported on both the Intel® Pentium 4 Processor with HT Technology for desktops and entry-level workstations, and laptops with the Mobile Intel Pentium 4 processor supporting Hyper-Threading Technology. Hyper-Threading Technology provides a significant performance boost that is particularly suited to todays business computing climate, applications, and operating systems (Hyper-Threading Technology 2005). Intel’s motherboard also supports Intel RAID (Redundant Array of inexpensive Disks) Technology which harnesses the power of multiple hard drives working in unison. (Intel RAID 2005). Intel® RAID Technology brings new levels of performance to the desktop by combining support for an 800MHz system bus with dual-channel DDR-400 and native SATA 150. Intel Performance Acceleration Technology helps to improve performance by reducing memory latencies. (Intel Raid 2005) Factors that Contribute to Improved performance of Intel Desktop Board D875PBZ There are many factors that contribute to the performance of the computer particularly that of the motherboard. Such factors include the processor’s speed, motherboard bus speed, hard disk drive capacity and speed, system memory. The earliest computing machines were based upon the original concept of computer by Von Neumann which is known as Von Neumann Architecture. The main feature of Von Neumann Architecture is the stored-program computer. By creating an instruction set architecture and detailing the computation as a series of instruction (the program), the computer becomes much more flexible, by treating those instructions in the same way as data (Von Neumann 2005). The stored-program design lets program modify themselves while running. The purpose is for program to modify portions of instruction. However, this became less important when index registers and indirect addressing became customary features of machine architecture. Current machine architecture makes small scale self-modifying code unnecessary. Processor pipelining and caching schemes makes it inefficient (Von Neumann 2005). Modern computers including the Intel Desktop Board D875PBZ make use of pipelining and caching schemes. In the last 50 years, the speed of processors and the capability of memory have increased substantially. The time to move information between a computers processor and the machines memory, however, has not increased substantially. This condition, known as memory latency, hobbles the performance of supercomputers. Given the physical limitations of integrated circuitry and the speed at which electrons can travel through it, a single processor can attain only a certain level of performance. The bandwidth (data transfer rate) between the CPU and memory is very small in comparison with the amount of memory. In modern machines, bandwidth is also very small in comparison with the rate at which the CPU itself can work. Under some circumstances (when the CPU is required to perform minimal processing on large amounts of data), this gives rise to a serious limitation in overall effective processing speed. The CPU is continuously forced to wait for vital data to be transferred to or from memory. As CPU speed and memory size have increased much faster than the bandwidth between the two, the bottleneck has become more and more of a problem(Tera’s 1999). These drawbacks leds to the development of Cache. A memory cache, sometimes called a cache store or RAM cache, is a portion of memory made of high-speed static RAM (SRAM) instead of the slower and cheaper dynamic RAM (DRAM) used for main memory. Memory caching is effective because most programs access the same data or instructions over and over. By keeping as much of this information as possible in SRAM, the computer avoids accessing the slower DRAM (Cache 2004). Cache is a special high-speed storage mechanism. It can be either a reserved section of main memory or an independent high-speed storage device. Intel Desktop Board D875PBZ supports the Intel Performance Acceleration Technology which intends to provide solution to the memory issues. Consequently, the vastly increased computational power promised by a conventional parallel processing supercomputer goes unrealized as its multiple processors must wait for the information stored in the computers relatively slow memory to catch up. The specialized, high-performance applications that rely on this architecture have two key characteristics: they are unstructured and dynamic. Unstructured codes have irregular data access patterns, which makes them particularly frustrating to run on cache-based architectures that attempt to hide latency by making repeated use of the data. Dynamic applications have workloads that vary during the runtime of the computation, requiring dynamic balancing of these workloads, a costly and formidable task on distributed memory machines (Tera’s 1999). Real Program Benchmarking Provides Real Life Situation Test In computing, a benchmark is the result of running a computer program, or a set of programs, in order to assess the relative performance of an object, by running a number of standard tests and trials against it(Benchmark 2005). Becnhmark aims to test “real life situation” but nothing could be more real than using user’s application programs to test actual performance. Real program benchmarking could provide better conclusive findings for the two alternative motherboards than any industry synthetic benchmark such as whetstone, Dhrystone, SPEC, and LINPACK benchmark.. Having the two system run on the user’s application software, and the strenght and weakness of each system can easily be interpreted depending on how the two system handle the workload. This would measure real world performance of mixed workloads. However, synthetic benchmarks still have their use for testing out individual components, like a hard disk or networking device. Synthetic and other industry-based benchmark benchmarking are not easy and often involves several iterative rounds in order to arrive at predictable, useful conclusions. Interpretation of benchmarking data is also extraordinarily difficult. Most of the time provide inaccurate measurement of computer capacity. As one famous slogan of the industry implies,"In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and benchmarks." Vendors tend to tune their products for industry-standard benchmark and seldom measure real world performance of mixed workloads. This could lead to confusion and even more lies. Users usually have very different perceptions of performance than benchmarks might otherwise suggest (Benchmark 2005). Computer processors double its speed in every 18 months. Software makers also do a catch up game with yearly updates or even sooner. Therefore, the motherboard chosen should meet all the demands of task at hand. Cheaper motherboard with less new features will be outdated in the near future. Motherboards with the latest features, even though they cost more, will eventually prove itslef to be cost effective in the long run. The general rule of thumb, therefore, is to buy systems powerful enough to handle your immediate needs yet flexible enough to handle future requirements (Peters 2005). Reference A7V400-MX SE. (2005), Asustek Computer .Inc., Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] AGP. (14 July 2003). Jupitermedia corporation, Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] Benchmark (conputing). (01 Sept. 2005), Wikimedia, Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] Cache. (16 Sept. 2004), Jupitermedia Corp., Available from: [05 Sept. 2005] DDR. (13 Feb. 2004), Jupitermedia Corp., Available from: [03 Sept. 2005] Dhrystone (Benchmark). (02 July 2005), Wikimwedia, Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] Hyper-Threading Technology. (2005), Intel corp.,Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] IEEE 1394. (06 Feb. 2003), Jupitermedia Corp., Available from: [03 Sept. 2005] Intel Desktop Board D875PBZ. (2005), Intel corp., Available from: [04 Sept. 2005} Intel RAID Technology. (2005), Intel corp., Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] LINPACK. 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(16 Nov. 1999), Virtual Medical Magazine, Available from: [05 Sept. 2005] USB. (04 Feb. 2004), Jupitermedia Corp., Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] Via KM 400A chipset. (2005), Via Technologies, Available from: [05 Sept. 2005} Von Neumann Architecture. (01 Sept. 2005), Wikimedia, Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] Whelstone(Benchmark). (30 Aug. 2005), Wikimedia, Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] Bibliography A7V400-MX SE. (2005), Asustek Computer .Inc., Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] AGP. (14 July 2003). Jupitermedia corporation, Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] Benchmark (conputing). (01 Sept. 2005), Wikimedia, Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] Cache. (16 Sept. 2004), Jupitermedia Corp., Available from: [05 Sept. 2005] DDR. (13 Feb. 2004), Jupitermedia Corp., Available from: [03 Sept. 2005] Dhrystone (Benchmark). (02 July 2005), Wikimwedia, Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] Hyper-Threading Technology. (2005), Intel corp.,Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] IEEE 1394. 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(28 Jan. 2002), Jupitermedia Corp., Available from: [03 Sept. 2005] Standards Performance Evaluator Corporation. (29 July 2005), Wikimedia, Available from: http://www.wikipedia.com-SPEC.wikipedia.thefreeencyclopedia.htm [04 Sept. 2005] Tera’s Computer’s motherboard architecture. (16 Nov. 1999), Virtual Medical Magazine, Available from: [05 Sept. 2005] USB. (04 Feb. 2004), Jupitermedia Corp., Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] Via KM 400A chipset. (2005), Via Technologies, Available from: [05 Sept. 2005} Von Neumann Architecture. (01 Sept. 2005), Wikimedia, Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] Whelstone(Benchmark). (30 Aug. 2005), Wikimedia, Available from: [04 Sept. 2005] Read More