The
motherboard houses all the important components of the computer
as well as supplying connections to all the peripherals within
the machine. This particular board supports a mixture of serial
and parallel hard drive interfaces. Derek went on to explain that
the serial interface was a relatively new innovation that uses
a 7-core interface cable instead of the usual 80-core parallel
cable. The added advantages of the serial interface are increased
write/read speeds (can write to two hard drives simultaneously)
and reduced noise problems. Typical operational speeds are 100Mb/sec
for a parallel interface with 150Mb/sec (and rising) for the serial
drives. It appears that the serial hard drive will eventually
become the standard. Currently there are parallel to serial interfaces
available for those who need them.
Other
technical points are the capability to support 4Gb of memory,
6-channel surround sound audio output and intelligent detection
of audio peripherals. Support for the latest 3D graphics architecture.
There are 5 * 32 bit PCI 2.2 expansion slots to fit extra cards
in the machine. One interesting addition is the so-called Asus
Post Reporter that utilises friendly voice messages and alerts
during the power on self- tests. You can even customise the voice
messages in different languages. An instant music feature allows
you to play back audio files before entering the operating system
– a stand-alone hi-fi system? Asus Q-Fan technology adjusts
the speed of the processor fan according to system loading maintaining
optimum efficiency. The board supports an array of I/O ports that
include the usual parallel, serial, keyboard and mouse interfaces.
It also offers 4 USB 2 ports, IEEE1394 port, RJ-45 port, S/PDIF
out port and the usual audio ports.
One
feature not previously mentioned is the RAID/SATA/IDE controller
that offers high performance RAID0, RAID1 or RAID0+1 functionality.
Those of you who were there will know that RAID technology is
all about and how it is used to try and prevent catastrophic loss
of data due to drive failure. This topic probably deserves an
article of its own, but the gist of it is to use two or more hard
drives to maintain the data. RAID is an acronym for Redundant
Array Of Independent Disks. By clever use of disk striping, blocks
of data are broken down into smaller pieces and are simultaneously
written to multiple locations. There is a significant increase
in performance and depending on the method of RAID control and
number of hard drives available a much greater chance of data
recovery from a drive failure.
RAID0
uses the data stripping method of data storage. Requires a minimum
of 2 hard drives but has no protection against data loss. It does
however offer 2* speed data transfer.
RAID1
is known as disk mirroring. Requires a minimum of 2 hard drives
which both contain a copy of the data. Operates at the same speed
as a single drive but offers 2 copies of data.
RAID 0+1 is a combination of the above two methods, requires a
minimum of 4 hard drives. It offers the data protection of RAID1
with the extra performance of RAID0. It is however, costly to
implement. There are other options available in the marketplace
but they tend to be the preserve of large system servers where
loss of data would be disastrous.
An
interesting evening and our thanks to Derek for the presentation. |
