Someone explain these new things on the mother boards comin out?

[lepper boy]

Hyper-Threading Technology

Serial ATA


appreciate it.. thx.
dave

 

[Megatomic]

Hyperthreading Technology is a feature of Intel's latest processors that allows it to operate just like two distinct physical processors in the system. For all intents and purposes, the system becomes an SMP computer. Programs that benefit from SMP benefit from Hyperthreading Technology.

Serial ATA is a new interface for IDE hard drives and perhaps optical drives soon. Instead of having an 80 conductor parallel ribbon cable there is, I believe, an 8 conductor serial cable which is very small and round. The upshot is twofold:

1) No ribbon cable means neater cabling and improved air flow in the system
2) It is faster than the old parallel standard.

The downshot is this: there are few SATA drives out today. They are coming though and it looks like SATA is going to replace the old ATA.


Both of those explanations are rudimentary. There is alot of info available on this forum and all over the web.

 

[floccus]

Hyperthreading is the official name that Intel has given a process that takes one physical processor and creates two logical processors. What it does is, while waiting for an operation to execute one batch, it will load and run another during the "wasted" clock cycles. This allows for data to be manipulated quicker and yields a performace gain when running multiple apps. The downside is that this technology can't be used all the time and its linked to the P4 architecture. This is bad because even though clock cycles are being wasted less, a branch mis-predict will be more costly while using HT because it has to fluch the whole pipeline of both lines of code.

SATA, as stated above is the newest protocol for accessing hard drives, and probably optical in the near future. It has a max bandwith greater than the current ATA133 standard. The problem is that current drives don't even take advantage of the ATA133 standard and most never hit the max bandwith of the ATA100 standard. The only real advantage currently with SATA is that the cables are serial. This means that the cable can be smaller and helps in keeping air flowing through the case. Another downside to SATA is its newness. Everything on the market is first generation stuff so its going to have some growing pains. And since HD's haven't maked out ATA100 yet, its safe to wait for the technology and manufacturing processes to mature before you switch.