ASSIGNMENT

Topic: Add on cards.

Submitted by, Aravind S (3) Jaikrishna M (14) Prasanth M R (27) Sachin B Raj (29)
S6 CS College of engg.,Cherthala

INTRODUCTION
Add on cards provide more features to a computer by adding a circuit board connected to the motherboard using PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) or PCI Express. PCI Express is quickly replacing PCI because of great bandwidth. Common examples include network cards, video cards, SATA controllers, RAID controllers, audio cards, USB/Firewire cards, etc. Conventional PCI (PCI is an initialism formed from Peripheral Component Interconnect, part of the PCI Local Bus standard and often shortened to PCI) is a computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer. These devices can take either the form of an integrated circuit fitted onto the motherboard itself, called a planar device in the PCI specification, or an expansion card that fits into a slot. The PCI Local Bus is common in modern PCs, where it has displaced ISA and VESA Local Bus as the standard expansion bus, and it also appears in many other computer types. Despite the availability of faster interfaces such as PCI-X and PCI Express, conventional PCI remains a very common interface. The PCI specification covers the physical size of the bus (including the size and spacing of the circuit board edge electrical contacts), electrical characteristics, bus timing, and protocols. The specification can be purchased from the PCI Special Interest Group (PCISIG). Typical PCI cards used in PCs include: network cards, sound cards, modems, extra ports such as USB or serial, TV tuner cards and disk controllers. Historically video cards were typically PCI devices, but growing bandwidth requirements soon outgrew the capabilities of PCI. PCI video cards remain available for supporting extra monitors and upgrading PCs that do not have any AGP or PCI Express slots. Many devices traditionally provided on expansion cards are now commonly integrated onto the motherboard itself, meaning that modern PCs often have no cards fitted. However, PCI is still used for certain specialized cards, although many tasks traditionally performed by expansion cards may now be performed equally well by USB devices.

Sound card
A sound card (also known as an audio card) is a computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs.It allows a computer to create and record real, high-quality sound.. Typical uses of sound cards include providing the audio component for multimedia applications such as music composition, editing video or audio, presentation, education, and entertainment

(games). Many computers have sound capabilities built in, while others require additional expansion cards to provide for audio capability. Before the invention of the sound card, a PC could make one sound - a beep. Although the computer could change the beep's frequency and duration, it couldn't change the volume or create other sounds. At first, the beep acted primarily as a signal or a warning. Later, developers created music for the earliest PC games using beeps of different pitches and lengths. This music was not particularly realistic -- you can hear samples from some of these soundtracks at Crossfire Designs. Fortunately, computers' sound capabilities increased greatly in the 1980s, when several manufacturers introduced add-on cards dedicated to controlling sound. Now, a computer with a sound card can do far more than just beep. It can produce 3-D audio for games or surround sound playback for DVDs. It can also capture and record sound from external sources.

Video card
A video card, video adapter, graphics accelerator card, display adapter, or graphics card is an expansion card whose function is to generate output images to a display. Many video cards offer added functions, such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, video capture, TV-tuner adapter, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, FireWire, light pen, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors (multi-monitor). Other modern high performance video cards are used for more graphically demanding purposes, such as PC games. Video hardware can be integrated on the motherboard, often occurring with early machines. In this configuration it is sometimes referred to as a video controller or graphics controller. Modern low-end to mid-range motherboards often include a graphics chipset developed by the developer of the north bridge (i.e. an nForce chipset with Nvidia graphics or an Intel chipset with Intel graphics) on the motherboard. This graphics chip usually has a small quantity of embedded memory and takes some of the system's main RAM, reducing the total RAM available. This is usually called integrated graphics or onboard graphics, and is low-performance and undesirable for those wishing to run 3D applications. A dedicated Graphics Card on the other hand has its own RAM and Processor specifically for processing video images, and thus offloads this work from the CPU and system RAM. Almost all of these motherboards allow the disabling of the integrated graphics chip in BIOS, and have an AGP, PCI, or PCI Express slot for adding a higher-performance graphics card in place of the integrated graphics. Despite the performance limitations, around 95% of new computers are sold with integrated graphics processors, leaving it for the individual user to decide whether to install a dedicated Graphics card.

A modern video card consists of a printed circuit board on which the components are mounted. These include: Graphics processing unit (GPU) A GPU is a dedicated processor optimized for accelerating graphics. Video BIOS The video BIOS or firmware contains the basic program, which is usually hidden, that governs the video card's operations and provides the instructions that allow the computer and software to interact with the card. Video memory Video memory may be used for storing other data as well as the screen image, such as the Z-buffer, which manages the depth coordinates in 3D graphics, textures, vertex buffers, and compiled shader programs. RAMDAC The RAMDAC, or Random Access Memory Digital-to-Analog Converter, converts digital signals to analog signals for use by a computer lay that uses analog inputs such as CRT displays. The RAMDAC is a kind of RAM chip that regulates the functioning of the graphics card. Outputs 9-pin VIVO for S-Video (TV-out), DVI for HDTV, and DE-15 for VGA outputs.

TV tuner card
A TV tuner card is a computer component that allows television signals to be received by a computer. Most TV tuners also function as video capture cards, allowing them to record television programs onto a hard disk. The interfaces for TV tuner cards are most commonly either PCI bus expansion card or the newer PCI Express (PCIe) bus for many modern cards, but PCMCIA, Express Card, or USB devices also exist.. The card contains a tuner and an analog-to-digital converter (collectively known as the analog front end) along with demodulation and interface logic. Some lower-end cards lack an onboard processor and, like a Win modem, rely on the system's CPU for demodulation.

There are currently four kinds of tuner card on the market: Analog TV tuners Analog television cards output a raw video stream, suitable for real-time viewing but ideally requiring some sort of compression if it is to be recorded. Hybrid tuners A hybrid tuner has one tuner that can be configured to act as an analog tuner or a digital tuner. Switching between the systems is fairly easy, but cannot be done immediately. The card operates as a digital tuner or an analog tuner until reconfigured.

Combo tuners
This is similar to a hybrid tuner, except there are two separate tuners on the card. One can watch analog while recording digital, or vice versa. The card operates as an analog tuner and a digital tuner simultaneously. The advantages over two separate cards are cost and utilization of expansion slots in the computer. As many regions around the world convert from analog to digital broadcasts, these tuners are gaining popularity.

Mobile TV
External TV tuner card attachments are available for mobile phone handsets like the iPhone, for watching mobile TV, via TV stations on 1seg in Japan (Softbank), and for soon for the proprietary subscription-based MediaFLO in the U.S. (Qualcomm).

Network interface controller

A network interface controller is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network. The controller may also be referred to as a network adapter, or a LAN adapter Whereas network interface controllers were commonly implemented on expansion cards that plug into a computer bus and known as a network interface card, network card or LAN card, the low cost and ubiquity of the Ethernet stand ver a computer network. It is both an OSI layer 1 (physical layer) and layer 2 (data link layer) device, as it provides physical access to a networking medium and provides a low-level addressing system through the use of MAC addresses. It allows users to connect to each other either by using cables or wirelessly. Every Ethernet network card has a unique 48-bit serial

number called a MAC address, which is stored in ROM carried on the card. Every computer on an Ethernet network must have a card with a unique MAC address. Whereas network cards used to be expansion cards that plug into a computer bus, the low cost and ubiquity of the Ethernet standard means that most newer computers have a network interface built into the motherboard. These either have Ethernet capabilities integrated into the motherboard chipset or implemented via a low cost dedicated Ethernet chip, connected through the PCI (or the newer PCI express) bus. A separate network card is not required unless multiple interfaces are needed or some other type of network is used. Newer motherboards may even have dual network interfaces built-in.

Modems
A modem (modulator-demodulator) is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data. Modems can be used over any means of transmitting analog signals, from driven diodes to radio. The most familiar example is a voice band modem that turns the digital data of a personal computer into modulated electrical signals in the voice frequency range of a telephone channel. These signals can be transmitted over telephone lines and demodulated by another modem at the receiver side to recover the digital data. Modems are generally classified by the amount of data they can send in a given time unit, normally measured in bits per second (bit/s, or bps). They can also be classified by the symbol rate measured in baud, the number of times the modem changes its signal state per second. For example, the ITU V.21 standard used audio frequency-shift keying, aka tones, to carry 300 bit/s using 300 baud, whereas the original ITU V.22 standard allowed 1,200 bit/s with 600 baud using phase shift keying.

Wireless internet cards

Wireless Internet cards, also known as Local Area Network, or LAN, cards, are one of the many types of adapter cards that add capabilities to your computer. Other adapter cards can enableteleconferencing, improve sound systems or download photos from a digital camera. Wireless Internet cards come in several forms. Different cards exist for laptops, desktops and PDAs. Many computers come with one preinstalled, but they can also be purchased relatively inexpensively and self-installed or simply inserted into a slot on the side of the computer.

The sheer number of WiFi hot spots has made wireless Internet cards even more desirable. Initially used mostly in homes or businesses so that multiple people could share an Internet going wireless.

Graphics card
The images you see on your monitor are made of tiny dots called pixels. At most common resolution settings, a screen displays over a million pixels, and the computer has to decide what to do with every one in order to create an image. To do this, it needs a translator -- something to take binary data from the CPU and turn it into a picture you can see. Unless a computer has graphics capability built into the motherboard, that translation takes place on the graphics card. A graphics card's job is complex, but its principles and components are easy to understand. In this article, we will look at the basic parts of a video card and what they do. We'll also examine the factors that work together to make a fast, efficient graphics card. For a graphics card ,the CPU, working in conjunction with software applications, sends information about the image to the graphics card. The graphics card decides how to use the pixels on the screen to create the image. It then sends that information to the monitor through a cable. Creating an image out of binary data is a demanding process. To make a 3-D image, the graphics card first creates a wire frame out of straight lines. Then, it rasterizes the image (fills in the remaining pixels). It also adds lighting, texture and color. For fast-paced games, the computer has to go through this process about sixty times per second. Without a graphics card to perform the necessary calculations, the workload would be too much for the computer to handle.