1- What is the difference between AGP and PCI-Express (PCI-E) in terms of proces

Question

1- What is the difference between AGP and PCI-Express (PCI-E) in terms of processing power and bandwidth? Primarily, we are looking for: How do they communicate, what speeds can they attain for communication, is communication full or ½ duplex?

2- What is the difference between DVI output and Analog output (DO NOT say one is analog and one is digital)?

When talking about data redundancy, you can configure hard drives in Raid configurations. The most popular are RAID-0 and RAID-5.

3- Define these two RAID levels RAID-0 and RAID-5 in terms of data protection, speed and the # of hard drives required?

4- How does RAID work in general and what is the drawback to it (DO NOT DEFINE THE VARIOUS RAID LEVELS HERE)?

5- Which RAID level is better in which situations (e.g. RAID-0 and RAID-5)? Be specific!

Explanation / Answer

1. AGP = AGP is direct , operates at 2.2 Gigabytes per second , it's half duplex
    PCI = During early days PCI bus has I/O bandwidth of 133 megabytes per second. PCI runs at 33MHZ .
              Over the period of time PCI bus has an increased in frequency from 33 to 66 MHz, while processor speeds
              have increased from 33 MHz to 3 GHz.
    PCIE x## is full duplex, the x## means how many lanes that PCIE slot has, x4 = 4 lanes . The initial speed of PCIE is 2.5 Gb/s which provides a nominal bandwidth of about 250 MB/s in each direction per PCI Express lane

Common Buses and their Max Bandwidth
PCI                                     132 MB/s
AGP 8X    2,100 MB/s
PCI Express 1x                 250 [500]* MB/s
PCI Express 2x       500 [1000]* MB/s
PCI Express 4x       1000 [2000]* MB/s
PCI Express 8x                 2000 [4000]* MB/s
PCI Express 16x               4000 [8000]* MB/s
PCI Express 32x       8000 [16000]* MB/s

2. a) Analog has been around considerably from very long time than DVI(Digital Visual Interface ).
     b) Analog is best for CRT monitors while DVI is preferred for LCD screens. because Using an analog interface to
         an LCD screen would mean that the digital needs to be converted into an analog signal before transmission
         then converted back to digital after it gets to the LCD monitor.
     c) Analog (cables) can only carry analog signals , as that time there was no need to include any other type of
         signal while DVI cables are capable of carrying either analog or digital signals.
     d) DVI is compatible with HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface ) and is mostly used in HDTV now a days
         while Analog is not.
     e) DVI has the capability of using two sets of links at once , thus provide greater bandwidth which is needed to
         receive a huge amount of data for every refresh and display extremely large resolution while analog does not.

3)   RAID 0 - Requires Minimum 2 disks. Provides Excellent performance ( as blocks are striped ) both in read and  
                      write operations and there is no overhead caused by parity controls.All storage capacity is used, there
                      is no overhead and easy to implement technology used . Biggest drawback is that it provides No
                      redundancy ( no mirror, no parity ). RAID 0 is not fault-tolerant. If one drive fails, all data in the RAID 0
                      array are lost. It should not be used for mission-critical systems.

      RAID 5 - because its the Best cost effective option providing both performance and redundancy. Use this for DB
                    that is heavily read oriented. Write operations will be slow. It provides maximum storage space 1/n ,
                    where n = number of disks along with Good redundancy ( distributed parity ) and Good performance (
                    as blocks are striped ).Minimum 3 Disks are required for this . It's a complex technology and If one of
                    the disks in an array using 4GB (or higher) size )disks fails and is replaced, restoring the data (the
                  rebuild time) may take a day or longer, depending on the load on the array and the speed of the
                   controller. If another disk goes bad during that time, data are lost forever.
4) RAID (Redundant array of independent disks; originally redundant array of inexpensive disks) provides a way of storing the same data in different places (thus, redundantly) on multiple hard disks, even though not all RAID levels provide redundancy. By having data on multiple disks, input/output (I/O) operations can overlap in a balanced way, provides improved performance. Since multiple disks increase the mean time between failures (MTBF), storing data redundantly also increases fault tolerance.

5) RAID 0

Where as RAID 5
      Good performance ( as blocks are striped ).
      Good redundancy ( distributed parity ).
      Best cost effective option providing both performance and redundancy. Use this for DB that is heavily read
      oriented. Write operations will be slow.
      RAID 5 is a good all-round system that combines efficient storage with excellent security and good
      performance. It is ideal for file and application servers that have a limited number of data drives.

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