2005/09/28

what is the FR4 technology?

FR4 PCB materials are made of epoxy resin that saturates woven fibreglass and as such is classed as a general grade laminate. It is suitable for both multilayer base materials and double sided materials. FR4 has the best electrical, thermal and physical characteristics compared to other laminates for many PCB applications.

2005/09/27

南北橋的對立起始點

The chipset is typical partitioned as a memory hub and an I/O hub since the memory bus often changes with each processor generation.
[Ref. Intel Developer Network for PCI Express Architecture]

Currently by far the most popular local I/O bus, the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus was developed by Intel and introduced in 1993. It is geared specifically to fifth- and sixth-generation systems, although the latest generation 486 motherboards use PCI as well.

不過最早的原因, 是早期顯示卡需要跟大家共用頻寬, 但是顯示難免需要吃掉太部分頻寬, 因此有兩個辦法可以解決, 一個就是提供一張擁有GPU的顯示卡, 讓顯示獨立運作. 一個就是讓顯示可以跟CPU是在同一個頻率下運作, 因此產生了CPU與Video RAM是經由Local Bus, 而非透過Expansion Bus. 但由於Local Bus各家不一, 因此在1993年, Intel提出了PCI Local Bus標準規格, 使得此事得以緩和.