Hz is for hertz

The Hz abbreviation stands for Hertz, but has nothing to do with pain or car rentals. In this context, "Hertz" pays homage to a guy named Heinrich Rudolf Hertz who figured out that radio and electricity have frequencies that you can measure in cycles per seconds. But that's getting more technical (and boring) than we need to be.

The workhorse of your computer is its microprocessor - a little chip about the size of a toenail that can work at a pretty fast speed. Exactly how fast it can work is measured in terms of "instructions per second", which roughly corresponds to Hertz's idea of frequency. Of course, microprocessors can do thousands, millions, or billions of instructions per second. So that brings good old K, M, and G into the picture once again, as summarized in Table 7.

Abbreviation	Stands for	Cycles per Second	That is...
KHz	KiloHertz	1,000	Thousand
MHz	MegaHertz	1,000,000	Million
GHz	GigaHertz	1,000,000,000	Billion

Table 1

A s is always the case with speed, "faster" means "less time waiting" for a human. The speed of the processor only affects "local tasks". It has nothing to do with how long it takes to get your e-mail or download stuff from the Internet. The speed of your Internet connection is all that matters there. The speed of your microprocessor has more to do with how long it takes to render changes to huge graphic images, or produce movies, or similar complex tasks that require a lot of internal calculations on the computer's part.

Alan Simpson

/www.coolnerds.com/

1. What is hardware? What is software?

2. What is the difference between a laptop and a desktop? What basic components do they have?

3. How are external devices connected to a PC?

4. What is the most essential part of the computer?

5. What chip is responsible for computer’s processing? What types of it do you know?

6. What parts does a processor consist of?

7. Where is the CPU located? What else can be connected to the motherboard?

8. On what factors does the measure of speed depend?

9. What does GHz stand for? What does it measure? Does 4GHz mean fast?

Exercise 2. Find in the text English equivalents for the following words or word combinations.

программное обеспечение аппаратное обеспечение периферийные устройства системный блок по средствам кабелей и портов включить кабель переносной взаимодействовать очень важный печатная плата выполнять программу координировать деятельность разбирать инструкции анализировать инструкции производить математические вычисления

хранить и обрабатывать данные следить за… измерять и синхронизировать поток данных микросхема памяти гнездо расширения контроллеры периферийных устройств разрядность шины устанавливать плату расширения частота, частотность соотноситься с влиять производить изменения требовать вычислений

Exercise 3. Find Russian equivalents for the following words or word combinations from the text.

basic components expansion boards to expand capabilities attached to an external device a portable computer to be integrated into a chip an integrated circuit a chipset a subsystem of a computer computer’s processing

a motherboard a control unit an arithmetic logic unit a register power and performance to handle the most demanding applications network capabilities to pay homage a cycle per second instructions per second

Exercise 4. Agree or disagree with the following statements. Use the following to express your opinion:

In my opinion, I agree that, I disagree that, to my mind, according to the text, as far as I know (think, remember)

1. Your PC is a system consisting of a few components.

2. Everybody has exactly the same hardware.

3. The actual computer is called the system unit.

4. The ports are usually on the back of the system.

5. The most essential part of a computer is a chip.

6. The CPU is located on a special board. It is called processing circuit.

7. The CPU executes program instructions and coordinates the activities that take place within the computer system.

8. The motherboard contains peripherals that are electrical devices inside the computer.

9. The work of a processor is measured in Hrz that means how frequent it can sent data from memory to a user and vice versa.

Exercise 5. Complete the sentences from the text:

1. The stuff that you can actually feel and touch … .

2. The basic components involve … .

3. Whatever external device you have, they are all connected… .

4. A chip contains … .

5. The most important chip is called the CPU and it does …

6. The processor consists of … .

7. For example, a CPU running at 4GHz will enable … .

8. The motherboard contains … .