Category Archives: Technology Explained
How CPU Cache Works – Technology Explained
You’ve undoubtedly heard about CPU cache and know that a larger cache is better, but what exactly is it and why does it affect performance? Additionally, you may be wondering why the cache is so small, normally between 32 KB and 16 MB depending on the level of cache (which we will explain a bit further one) on a high end processor or less when system RAM is measured in gigabytes.
80 PLUS Certification – Technology Explained
The 80 PLUS certification initiative was launched in 2004 by Ecos Consulting to promote energy efficiency, which results in lower power consumption, less heat output, and therefore greater reliability. The first 80 PLUS PSU was brought to market by Seasonic early the next year. There are currently over 6,400 PSUs in the 80 PLUS database, with more joining the ranks all the time. This is a clear indication that it has been a success and become an industry standard.
How Ray Tracing Works – Technology Explained
Ray tracing is a rendering technique for more life-like lighting effects in a 3D scene. As the name suggests, each ray of light has its path traced from the camera to objects on screen and then to light sources. Traditionally, games use rasterization for calculating the lighting effects, where the image being displayed on screen is flattened into a 2D plane and the brightness of each pixel is calculated according to the amount of light hitting it. With ray tracing, there is a lot more involved such as reflections, refractions, chromatic aberrations, light scattering and more.
How Shazam Works – Technology Explained
Shazam is a cellphone app that most of us use for identifying songs that we hear on the radio, playing in a restaurant, or anywhere else really. For us humans, identifying a song is very easy. We can hear a small snippet of a song and identify it very quickly, even if it is played on a different instrument or hummed. We can even identify a song from one single instrument playing, or possibly even the bass line.
