Acronyms are used every day in the computing world and users may not necessarily know what the abbreviation stands for, or even the meaning behind it, so we have picked commonly used acronyms to explain the meaning.
DDR is common when talking about memory, and it stands for Double Data Rate. So what is Double Data Rate? It is technology that allows data to be transferred on the rising and falling edges of the clock signal, this increases the data rate by two compared to singular data rate. There are different DDR names, DDR1, DDR2, DDR3, and DDR4, over time the Double Data Rate has increased in speed giving faster memory speeds.
FPS is used frequently, however in the gaming world it two different meanings, first of all, it can stand for First Person Shooter, a genre of game where the user’s perspective is from the eyes of the protagonist. Examples include, Counter Strike, Call of Duty and Battlefield. The second meaning is Frames Per Second, this is the number of frames in the game or application that can be rendered in one second by the computer. More powerful hardware will help providing a higher number of FPS, giving the game more fluid and enjoyable gameplay.
SSDs are becoming vastly popular, this acronym is short for Solid State Drive, it has the same functionality as a normal hard drive, but is much faster when it comes to moving files and faster loading times. Having an SSD installed in your computer can really improve the speed of your computer, making it faster when turning on your PC but also faster when loading games and applications.
ATX is Advanced Technology Extended, it is a form factor specification and it sets standard sizes and connections for motherboards and power supply units. In relation to motherboards, ATX is the full-size motherboard layout, however there are smaller standard motherboard sizes such as micro-ATX and mini-ITX and also there is a larger standard form factor that is e-ATX. In terms of power supplies, they all have the same height and width, however only the depth varies therefore most ATX power supply units will fit a standard ATX case.
BIOS is the Basic Input Output System, it is a very basic software presented on the motherboard, the BIOS loads before anything else does on the computer and allows the user to control the hardware and the operation. This is something of great interest to computer enthusiasts, it allows overclockers to tweak the hardware further potentially to get further speeds.
APU is a Accelerated Processing Unit, a term used by AMD that includes the processor and graphics core onto the same package. This allows for a better link between graphics and processor, and reduces the system power requirement and latencies as both of these key processors are included on the same package.
NAS is extremely important for personal and business storage solutions, the term NAS stands for Network Attached Storage and it can be very basic or complicated depending on the setup. It means that there is a hard drive that is available to use over a network, and people often use a small dedicated NAS box with a number of hard drives running in a RAID array.
RAID also known as Redundant Array of Inexpensive (or Independent) Disks, it is not a backup, but it is a way to link several hard drives together to increase performance and in some cases offer a measure of redundancy. Commonly used is RAID 0 (Needs at least 2 drives, moves data around faster. No capacity lost, but if one drive fails all your data is gone.) and RAID 1 (Needs at least 2 drives, likely to be zero change in speed but you only have the capacity of one drive. If one drive dies, you don’t loose any data. This is frequently confused with a backup).
The last but not least is one you can share with your friends.
PEBCAK – Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard; One of the most difficult hardware/software errors to resolve. Reboot suggested.
- 4 min read
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For that last one I use PICNIC – Problem In Chair, Not In Computer
I always remember PCMCIA
which officially is Personal Computer Memory Card Interface Architecture.
But I prefer
People Cannot Memorise Complicated Industry Acronyms
I remember using 8″ floppy disks and tape drives the size of a hub cap.
I can remember paying £100 for 1meg of RAM in the first PC I made and I put in 4 meg!!!! and £148 for my first 2x CDRom Drive
I always remembered TWAIN as Technology Without an Interesting Name