Processors, Cores and Sockets explained

Whiteboard Wednesday Episode 19: Processors, Cores and Sockets explained

Whiteboard Wednesday is me, a whiteboard and learning about all things IT Asset Management (ITAM), every Wednesday!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2za47jfph8

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Processors, Cores, Sockets – technical terms, but we need to be aware of them. If we’re managing assets in our environment. It’s relevant for hardware asset management. And it’s relevant for power-based licensing, we need to know the terms.  

What is a processor?

So, I’m sure you’ve all seen at some point in your life, a motherboard, which is the green card inside a computing device, might be a mobile phone or might be a large computer. This is the motherboard in which all the components of the computer are stuck in. Then you have the processor.  

One particular task or multitasking?

So, you have a microchip, it looks like a squished black spider. It’s physically stuck into the motherboard and what computing allows you to do with this chip as well is multitasking. So rather than this is like the processing power the brain of the computer, rather than it being all consumed with one particular task, it can multitask because you can have two brains within that one physical chip. 

What does all this mean?

What does all this mean? Well, this physical connection to the motherboard is called a socket. You could have multiple sockets, you could have multiple chips in the motherboard, especially for big servers, this is the processor and then these two are multitasking elements. These two have the ability to execute two things at once are called cores. So, in this instance, it’s a single socket with dual core. Technical terms, but these are things that you’re going to get thrown at you if you’re managing hardware assets or managing power based licensing.