Hardware
39 Hardware terms explained simply, ordered from basic to advanced. Start at the top if the topic is new to you.
Basic
AMD
The chip designer that competes with Intel in CPUs and with NVIDIA in GPUs.
Apple
The company that sells the iPhone and the Mac, plus the services that run on them.
Chip
A sliver of silicon carrying billions of tiny switches that compute and remember.
Clock speed
How many times per second a processor ticks, measured in gigahertz (GHz).
CPU
The chip that runs your programs, one instruction after another, very fast.
Data center
A building full of servers where the internet, the cloud and AI actually run.
Display resolution
How many dots, or pixels, make up a screen's image: more dots, finer detail.
Firmware
Software built into a device to run its hardware, from routers to washing machines.
GPU
The chip that does thousands of simple calculations at once.
Hard disk drive
Storage that keeps data on spinning magnetic platters: slower than an SSD, but cheap.
Intel
The American company behind most PC and server processors for decades.
Internet of things
Everyday objects with sensors and a network connection: thermostats, meters, doorbells.
Moore's law
The observation that chips fit about twice as many transistors every two years.
Motherboard
The main circuit board that every other part of a computer plugs into.
NVIDIA
The company that sells the shovels of the AI gold rush.
Operating system
The base software that runs a device and lets every app share its hardware.
Qualcomm
Designs the chips, and owns key patents, that let phones talk to cell towers.
RAM
The computer's short-term memory: fast, small and wiped when you turn it off.
Raspberry Pi
A cheap, credit-card-sized computer made for learning and tinkering.
Samsung
Korean giant that sells phones and TVs, and makes much of the world's memory chips.
Server
A computer whose job is to answer requests from other computers, all day, every day.
SSD
Storage with no moving parts: where your files live when the power is off.
Tesla
An electric car maker that treats the car as a computer on wheels.
USB
The standard plug for connecting and charging almost everything.
Virtual machine
A complete computer made of software, running inside a real one.
Xiaomi
A Chinese maker of phones and smart home gadgets, and more recently electric cars.
Intermediate
Arm
The British company that designs the processor blueprints inside almost every phone.
ASML
The Dutch company that builds the machines every advanced chip factory depends on.
BIOS and UEFI
The first program a PC runs: it checks the hardware and starts the operating system.
Broadcom
An American chip designer behind data center networking, Wi-Fi and custom AI chips.
Cores and threads
Why a CPU is really several processors, and why it can juggle even more tasks.
NPU
A small AI engine inside phones and laptops that runs models fast on little battery.
Process node
The name of a generation of chip manufacturing, like "3 nm". A label, not a size.
Quantum computer
A machine that uses quantum physics for a few specific problems. Not a faster PC.
System on a chip
One chip that holds a computer's main parts: CPU, GPU, memory control and more.
TPU
Google's chip designed specifically for the math of neural networks.
Transistor
An electrically controlled switch, the basic building block of every chip.
TSMC
The factory that makes the world's most advanced chips for everyone else.
VRAM
The memory built into a graphics card, where the GPU keeps what it is working on.