Intel Core is the name used for the 32-bit processor codenamed Yonah , released on January 5, 2006. The "Intel Core" name denoted the first Intel processors for mobile devices which were available with two cores packaged on a single silicon chip. The Intel Core brand replaced the Pentium M brand used for earlier mobile processors with a similar microarchitecture. Despite its name, the Intel Core (Yonah) is more similar to the Pentium M than to the Intel Core 2. There was a major rebranding effort by Intel starting January 2006, but in fact some computers with Yonah cores continued to be marketed as Pentium computers. The next generation of desktop and mobile processors after the Intel Core processor is the 64-bit Intel Core 2. ...more

A chip with 80 processing cores and capable of more than a trillion calculations per second (teraflops) has been unveiled by Intel. The Teraflops chip is not a commercial release but could point the way to more powerful processors, said the firm. The chip achieves performance on a piece of silicon no bigger than a fingernail that 11 years ago required a machine with 10,000 chips inside it. The challenge is to find a way to program the many cores simultaneously. Current desktop machines have up to four separate cores, while the Cell processor inside the PlayStation 3 has eight (seven of them useable). Each core is effectively a programmable chip in its own right. But to take advantage of the extra processing power, programmers need to gives instructions to each core that work in parallel with one another. There are already specialist chips with multiple cores - such as those used in router hardware and graphics cards - but Dr Mark Bull, at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre, said multi-core chips were forcing a sea-change in the programming of desktop applications.. ...more

A motherboard is the central or primary circuit board making up a complex electronic system, such as a modern computer. It is also known as a mainboard, baseboard, system board, planar board or, on Apple computers, a logic board, and is sometimes abbreviated as mobo. Most motherboards produced today are designed for so-called IBM-compatible computers, which held over 96% of the global personal computer market in 2005.Motherboards for IBM-compatible computers are specifically covered in the PC motherboard article.
A motherboard, like a backplane, provides the electrical connections by which the other components of the system communicate, but unlike a backplane also contains the central processing unit and other subsystems such as real time clock, and some peripheral interfaces. A typical desktop computer is built with the microprocessor, main memory, and other essential components on the motherboard. Other components such as external storage, controllers for video display and sound, and peripheral devices are typically attached to the motherboard via edge connectors and cables, although in modern computers it is increasingly common to integrate these "peripherals" into the motherboard.

The Accelerated Graphics Port (also called Advanced Graphics Port, often shortened to AGP) is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a graphics card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. Between 2004 and 2007, AGP was replaced by PCI Express. As of 2007 new AGP cards and motherboards are still available to buy, however they are becoming much less common. As computers became increasingly graphically oriented, successive generations of graphics adapters began to push the limits of PCI, a bus with shared bandwidth. This led to the development of AGP, a "bus" dedicated to graphics adapters.

For the needs of modern graphics adapters, AGP is superior to PCI because it provides a dedicated pathway between the slot and the processor rather than sharing the PCI bus, allowing for faster communication. AGP also uses sideband addressing, meaning that the address and data buses are separated so the entire packet does not need to be read to get addressing information. This is done by adding eight extra 8-bit buses which allow the graphics controller to issue new AGP requests and commands at the same time with other AGP data flowing via the main 32 address/data (AD) lines. This results in improved overall AGP data throughput.

Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, refers to computer components, devices and recording media that retain digital data used for computing for some interval of time. Computer data storage provides one of the core functions of the modern computer, that of information retention. It is one of the fundamental components of all modern computers, and coupled with a central processing unit (CPU, a processor), implements the basic computer model used since the 1940s.

In contemporary usage, memory usually refers to a form of semiconductor storage known as random access memory (RAM) and sometimes other forms of fast but temporary storage. Similarly, storage today more commonly refers to mass storage - optical discs, forms of magnetic storage like hard disks, and other types slower than RAM, but of a more permanent nature. Historically, memory and storage were respectively called primary storage and secondary storage.