Optical Fiber

An optical fiber cable is a transmission medium in which is made up of glass (silica) and the data's are transferred as optical signals (light signals). LASER or a LED is used for transmitting the optical signal (data) and a photodiode is used for receiving the optical signal.

Data transmission through optical fiber cable will be faster than co-axial cable and twisted pair cable (both uses copper strand as the medium of communication). The optical signal wont travel in a straight line. The rays will reflects on wall of the glass strand. The cable is surrounded by many layers, this will helps to prevent external noise and refraction of signal.

Types of fiber cable

                  There are three basic types of fiber cable:

• Single mode fiber optic cable
• Multi-mode step index optic cable
• Multi-mode gradient index optic cable

Types of fiber optic connectors

• ST

• SC

• FC

• FDDI

• Mini-BNC

• BICONIC

• LC

• SMA

• MT-RJ

SMA connector is used in most of the optical communication, because it is water-resistant and durable compared to the other type of connectors.

Ivy Bridge Processor

Ivy bridge processor is the successor of Sandy Bridge processor from Intel. Ivy bridge processor is expected to be released in September, 2012. It is developed under the "Core" brand. Ivy bridge architecture will be used in Core i3,i5 and i7 processors.

Ivy bridge architecture is designed to work in 22nm whereas Sandy Bridge works in 32nm. So far all the processors worked with planar (2D) transistors whereas Ivy bridge uses tri-gate (3D) transistors. As a result, the speed of processing will be more with less power consumption.

The speed of the processor is from 2.5 to 4.2 GHz (upto 3.9 GHz can be used for workstations and above 4 GHz speed can be used in servers). Ivy Bridge is designed with tertiary cache memory (L3). The size of cache is from 3 MB to 8 MB which will boosts the speed of execution.

Ivy bridge supports USB 3.0. Ivy bridge allows backward compatibility. So that, the motherboard of Sandy bridge processor can be used to Ivy bridge processor.

Features

• Less power consumption
• High Performance
• PCI-E support
• Support HD 4000 graphics
• Support for DDR3 RAM
• Supports USB 3.0

Ivy bridge architecture is used for mobile processors too. Ivy bridge is the predecessor for "Haswell" architecture. 

Drive Interface

Drive interfaces are used to connect the drives (hard drive and optical drive) with motherboard and power supply (SMPS). The drive interface is used for both power supply and data transfer. The three types of drive interfaces are:

• PATA - Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment
• SATA - Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
• SCSI - Small Computer System Interface

Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment (PATA)

            PATA is used to connect the hard drive with the motherboard. The maximum data transfer rate achieved in PATA is 133 Mbps. PATA contains two channels in a single cable. They are called as Master and Slave.

Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA)

         

         SATA is also used to connect hard drive with the motherboard. SATA is used to carry both the power and the data in a single cable. SATA replaced PATA technology. The maximum data transfer rate in SATA is 600Mbps. SATA has only one channel in a single cable.

Small Computer System Interface (SCSI)

           SCSI is a drive interface which is additionally included in thee system. by default, SCSI will not present in a system. It should be added using adapters for using SCSI. It is a buffered, peer-to-peer interface connection). Upto 16 devices can be connected in a single port. The data transfer rate in SCSI is 80 MBps.

Differences between PATA & SATA

• SATA consumes lesser power than PATA.
• SATA has higher data transfer rate than PATA.
• 2 channels can be connected in a single cable in PATA whereas only one channel can be connected in SATA.
• SATA's cable length is longer than PATA and PATA's cable is wider than SATA.
• SATA allows dull duplex communication and it is not possible in PATA.
• PATA is incompatible with many devices, SATA is compatible with all the devices.