MB megabyte
 
     (1) When spelled MB, short for megabyte (1,000,000 or 1,048,576 bytes, 
         depending on the context). 
     (2) When spelled Mb, short for megabit.
 
GB gigabyte
    
     2 to the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. One gigabyte is equal to 
     1,024 megabytes. Gigabyte is often abbreviated as G or GB. 
 
MHz megahertz
  
     Abbreviation for megahertz. One MHz represents one million cycles 
     per second. The speed of microprocessors, called the clock speed, 
     is measured in megahertz. For example, a microprocessor that runs 
     at 200 MHz executes 200 million cycles per second. Each computer 
     instruction requires a fixed number of cycles, so the clock speed 
     determines how many instructions per second the microprocessor Can 
     execute. To a large degree, this controls how powerful the microprocessor
     is. Another chief factor in determining a microprocessor's power is 
     its data width (that is, how many bits it can manipulate at one time). 
     In addition to microprocessors, the speeds of buses and interfaces are 
     also measured in MHz.

K kilobyte
  
     In decimal systems, kilo stands for 1,000, but in binary systems, a kilo 
     is 1,024 (2 to the 10th power). Technically, therefore, a kilobyte is 
     1,024 bytes, but it is often used loosely as a synonym for 1,000 
     bytes. For example, a computer that has 256K main memory can store 
     approximately 256,000 bytes (or characters) in memory at one time. 

     A megabyte is 2 to the 20th power (approximately 1 million) and a 
     gigabyte is 2 to the 30th power (approximately 1 billion). 

     In computer literature, kilobyte is usually abbreviated as K or Kb. 
     To distinguish between a decimal K (1,000) and a binary K (1,024), 
     the IEEE has suggested following the convention of using a small 
     k for a decimal kilo and a capital K for a binary kilo, but this 
     convention is by no means strictly followed. 
  
Hyper-Threading
 
     A technology developed by Intel 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.  
  

Created on ... July 07, 2004