CPU extensions

- Over the years the CPU manufacturers add big chunks of capability to their CPUs. Generically these are known as CPU extensions, and they've been going on for years, and years, and years. Gosh, a billion years ago they do things like add long integer mathematics and stuff like that. And then they would add 3D support, and power management features, and all this stuff that keeps adding to the capability of the CPU. Today two of the big processor extensions that are on the A+ exam is first of all there's virtualization support.

It's really cool today to take one physical computer, load a copy of Windows on it, and then create virtualized extra systems on there. So literally you've got a computer with a computer. Virtualization is great. It really saves on power. Instead of having four separate computers do something you can have one computer do it. It's nice because is a system goes does, you can just literally restore it from a file and it comes right back up. But virtualization takes a lot of work on your CPU. So in order to reduce the workload, most of today's modern CPUs have virtualization support.

Virtualization support is done, usually you go into BIOS and you turn something on and say, "Yes, I want to support it." And it'll do things, for example, like it'll have two different memory locations. So it'll set aside memory just for the virtual system, stuff like that. It's really, really important, especially if you're going to be doing virtualization. The other big one is integrated GPU, or graphics processing unit. A GPU is nothing more than really just a video card that is built into the CPU itself. This is nice.

A lot of times people don't need a lot of real super duper video firepower. So they just, in essence, put a video card into the CPU and it allows you to do some cool things. For example, it makes for smaller systems, uses less power, and now not going to be the best video in the whole world. It'll be pretty good. But at least it's all built in. You need to think about these things while you're making your buying decision in terms of what type of CPU you want. (jazz music)