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In computing, BIOS (/ ˈ b aɪ ɒ s,-oʊ s /, BY-oss, -ohss; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the booting process (power-on startup). [1]
An alternative method is via instruction-based I/O which requires that a CPU have specialized instructions for I/O. [1] Both input and output devices have a data processing rate that can vary greatly. [2] With some devices able to exchange data at very high speeds direct access to memory (DMA) without the continuous aid of a CPU is required. [2]
Windows 7 Professional and up support up to 2 physical processors (CPU sockets), [131] whereas Windows 7 Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium editions support only 1. [132] Physical processors with either multiple cores, or hyper-threading , or both, implement more than one logical processor per physical processor.
Memory-mapped I/O is preferred in IA-32 and x86-64 based architectures because the instructions that perform port-based I/O are limited to one register: EAX, AX, and AL are the only registers that data can be moved into or out of, and either a byte-sized immediate value in the instruction or a value in register DX determines which port is the source or destination port of the transfer.
A hardware abstraction layer (HAL) is an abstraction layer, implemented in software, between the physical hardware of a computer and the software that runs on that computer. . Its function is to hide differences in hardware from most of the operating system kernel, so that most of the kernel-mode code does not need to be changed to run on systems with different hardwa
Learn how to download and install or uninstall the Desktop Gold software and if your computer meets the system requirements.
[7] A device driver that is not designed for a specific hardware component may allow another device to function. This is because the basic functionality of a hardware device class is similar. The functionality of the video card class, for example, allows the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter driver to work with a wide variety of video cards.
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