Computer Motherboard Research Articles

The Companies We Keep: Effects of Relational Embeddedness on Organizational Performance1

Building on first-hand qualitative and quantitative data collected from computer motherboard manufacturers, this research proposes a contingency argument for the effects of relational embeddedness on organizational performance. Results show that the effects of embeddedness vary depending on the specific dimension of embeddedness, organizational age, performance measures, and the type of supplier relations, and that the concept is far more complex than previous literature suggests. Two main conclusions are that a closer supplier relationship improves both organizational growth rate and production quality for younger organizations, while in chipset supplier relations, a highly committed supplier worsens production quality more for younger firms.

Evaluation of complex and dynamic safety tasks in human learning using the ACT-R and SOAR skill acquisition theories

This paper provides a human-centered analytical approach to learning dynamic and complex tasks using the Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational (ACT-R) and the State, Operator And Result (SOAR) models by comparing the task times of the model and the subjects. Twenty-one full time assembly line workers at a local computer company (14 men and 7 women) from ages 18–32 (Mean = 19.86 years, SD = 0.96 years) were randomly selected for this analysis. The task involved the placement of printed circuit board (PCB) components on the flow line of the desktop computer mother board manufacturing process. The overall timed performance of the subjects indicated that the match between the model and the subjects was good, resulting in an R 2 – value of 0.94. At the unit task level performance, and R 2 – value of 0.96 for placing the PCBs on the flow line. For tasks involving picking and searching of PCBs, the obtained R 2 – value was 0.76 and R 2 of 0.68 at the keystroke level. Findings revealed that the model already started out with a complete strategy of performing the task, whereas the human participants had to acquire additional learning information during the trials. Efforts will be made in the future to determine how the performance of the human subjects could be enhanced to meet or the same level as the model performance.

A structure-based approach to evaluation product adaptability in adaptable design

Adaptable design, as a new design paradigm, involves creating designs and products that can be easily changed to satisfy different requirements. In this paper, two types of product adaptability are proposed as essential adaptability and behavioral adaptability, and through measuring which respectively a model for product adaptability evaluation is developed. The essential adaptability evaluation proceeds with analyzing the independencies of function requirements and function modules firstly based on axiomatic design, and measuring the adaptability of interfaces secondly with three indices. The behavioral adaptability reflected by the performance of adaptable requirements after adaptation is measured based on Kano model. At last, the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by an illustrative example of the motherboard of a personal computer. The results show that the method can evaluate and reveal the adaptability of a product in essence, and is of directive significance to improving design and innovative design.

Close but not committed? The multiple dimensions of relational embeddedness

This research addresses the complexity of embedded inter-firm ties. Based on both qualitative and quantitative data from field research in the computer motherboard manufacturing industry, this paper investigates the origins of close ties and committed relationships, and explores the relationships between these two dimensions of embedded inter-firm relationships. The results show that companies establish close relationships with their partners to resolve coordination uncertainty due to a high level of task interdependence in their exchanges, and that firms become more collaboratively committed when they seek to alter a disadvantaged power asymmetry. At the same time, the fieldwork found an underlying conflict between the embeddedness dimensions of closeness and commitment: too much closeness reduces a partner’s commitment. These findings have significant implications for the formation of embedded corporate ties as well as the effects of embeddedness on organizations.

Simulation of Cracks in Fiber Reinforced Composite Plate

Material flaws, pre-cracks and crack initiation due to cyclic loading often lead to undetected crack propagation in commercial structures like aircraft components, automotive parts and computer motherboard. Cyclic loading can make the crack grow large into any shape with an arbitrary orientation, depending on the structure geometry, boundary and loading conditions. Since crack propagation in many cases may lead to catastrophic failure with human and monetary loss as a result, it is important to enable crack growth prediction at all stages of development and during maintenance in order to prevent such scenarios. Micro mechanical approach is used for modelling the crack in composite materials. Crack propagation in a single edge crack plate is carried out by using FEM analysis. 2D model is analysed to determine the crack growth. The crack propagation rate, stress intensity factor and strain energy release rate are predicted by varying the crack length in fiber reinforced epoxy composite using NISA/ENDURE.

Computer cooling using a two phase minichannel thermosyphon loop heated from horizontal and vertical sides and cooled from vertical side

Computer cooling using a two phase minichannel thermosyphon loop heated from horizontal and vertical sides and cooled from vertical sideIn the present paper it is proposed to consider the computer cooling capacity using the thermosyphon loop. A closed thermosyphon loop consists of combined two heaters and a cooler connected to each other by tubes. The first heater may be a CPU processor located on the motherboard of the personal computer. The second heater may be a chip of a graphic card placed perpendicular to the motherboard of personal computer. The cooler can be placed above the heaters on the computer chassis. The thermosyphon cooling system on the use of computer can be modeled using the rectangular thermosyphon loop with minichannels heated at the bottom horizontal side and the bottom vertical side and cooled at the upper vertical side. The riser and a downcomer connect these parts. A one-dimensional model of two-phase flow and heat transfer in a closed thermosyphon loop is based on mass, momentum, and energy balances in the evaporators, rising tube, condenser and the falling tube. The separate two-phase flow model is used in calculations. A numerical investigation for the analysis of the mass flux rate and heat transfer coefficient in the steady state has been accomplished.

Computer hardware for radiologists: Part 2

Computers are an integral part of modern radiology equipment. In the first half of this two-part article, we dwelt upon some fundamental concepts regarding computer hardware, covering components like motherboard, central processing unit (CPU), chipset, random access memory (RAM), and memory modules. In this article, we describe the remaining computer hardware components that are of relevance to radiology. “Storage drive” is a term describing a “memory” hardware used to store data for later retrieval. Commonly used storage drives are hard drives, floppy drives, optical drives, flash drives, and network drives. The capacity of a hard drive is dependent on many factors, including the number of disk sides, number of tracks per side, number of sectors on each track, and the amount of data that can be stored in each sector. “Drive interfaces” connect hard drives and optical drives to a computer. The connections of such drives require both a power cable and a data cable. The four most popular “input/output devices” used commonly with computers are the printer, monitor, mouse, and keyboard. The “bus” is a built-in electronic signal pathway in the motherboard to permit efficient and uninterrupted data transfer. A motherboard can have several buses, including the system bus, the PCI express bus, the PCI bus, the AGP bus, and the (outdated) ISA bus. “Ports” are the location at which external devices are connected to a computer motherboard. All commonly used peripheral devices, such as printers, scanners, and portable drives, need ports. A working knowledge of computers is necessary for the radiologist if the workflow is to realize its full potential and, besides, this knowledge will prepare the radiologist for the coming innovations in the ‘ever increasing’ digital future.

The study on the vibration optimization model of the wearable computer motherboard

The study on the vibration optimization model of the wearable computer motherboard

Detecting and identifying interventions with the Whittle spectral approach in a long memory panel data model

This article provides a procedure for the detection and identification of outliers in the spectral domain where the Whittle maximum likelihood estimator of the panel data model proposed by Chen [W.D. Chen, Testing for spurious regression in a panel data model with the individual number and time length growing, J. Appl. Stat. 33(88) (2006b), pp. 759–772] is implemented. We extend the approach of Chang and co-workers [I. Chang, G.C. Tiao, and C. Chen, Estimation of time series parameters in the presence of outliers, Technometrics 30 (2) (1988), pp. 193–204] to the spectral domain and through the Whittle approach we can quickly detect and identify the type of outliers. A fixed effects panel data model is used, in which the remainder disturbance is assumed to be a fractional autoregressive integrated moving-average (ARFIMA) process and the likelihood ratio criterion is obtained directly through the modified inverse Fourier transform. This saves much time, especially when the estimated model implements a huge data-set. Through Monte Carlo experiments, the consistency of the estimator is examined by growing the individual number N and time length T, in which the long memory remainder disturbances are contaminated with two types of outliers: additive outlier and innovation outlier. From the power tests, we see that the estimators are quite successful and powerful. In the empirical study, we apply the model on Taiwan's computer motherboard industry. Weekly data from 1 January 2000 to 31 October 2006 of nine familiar companies are used. The proposed model has a smaller mean square error and shows more distinctive aggressive properties than the raw data model does.

A Power Management Unit With Integrated Stand-bySupply for Computer Motherboards:Control and VLSI Design

This paper focuses on the control strategy of a multiple-output active-clamp forward converter devoted to PC power supplies. The primary- and secondary-side switches of the forward converter are driven by dedicated ASIC units. In detail, regulation of the main-switch duty-cycle is achieved by a primary IC implementing feed-forward control, while the outputs of the converter are locally regulated by two ASICs independently from the primary-switch duty-cycle. Since no communication is required during normal mode, the duty -cycle is definied by the the primary IC which controls the main switch in such a way that the primary duty-cycle is larger than the secondary one. A peak overall efficiency higher than 90% at 50% load has been obtained in normal operative conditions. During stand-by mode, communication between the primary controller and the secondary ones is however required to increase the low-power-mode efficiency. The working principle of the proposed converter is described in detail both in normal and stand-by mode. Several experimental results are carried out to validate the approach discussed throughout this paper.

WEIBULL PARAMETERS' TREND UNDER VARYING PRODUCTION LOTS

ABSTRACT Based on warranty databases, this article is a study of how the variation of Weibull parameters in different production lots affects the reliability of electronic appliance. Three-parameter Weibull distribution is performed to simulate product failure mode and Weibull probability paper is used to define the shape, scale and location parameter for each production lot. Two computer motherboard cases are studied under free repair/replacement warranty condition. The results demonstrate the location parameter (γ) is not zero and approaches a constant of 480 hours, under a smoothly fulfillment process. Most of time the shape parameter (β) is close to 1.0. Both the shape and scale (η) parameters significantly reflect product durability. Finally, the reliability trend is affected by parameters set on varying production lots and will decline to 0.95 and 0.90 while operational time moves to 1.5% and 2.5% of MTBF respectively.

Attribute Selection Based on Rough Set Theory for Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) Fault Diagnosis

Electromagnetic emissions are radiated from every part of a personal computer motherboard, thus producing electromagnetic interference (EMI). EMI has an adverse effect on the surrounding environment because EMI could cause malfunctions or fatal problems in other digital devices. EMI engineers diagnose motherboard EMI problems using the electromagnetic noise data measured by the spectrum analyzer. Finding the sources (e.g., PS2, USB, VGA) of electromagnetic noise is a time-consuming process. The attribute selection and fault diagnosis was developed based on the advantage of rough set theory (RST). RST is a novel data mining approach for dealing with vagueness and uncertainty. It can be used to find hidden patterns in data sets. In this study, the basic rough set theory concepts are introduced. The rough set approach enables one to discover the minimal subsets of condition attributes associated with the motherboard EMI fault diagnosis problem. The operating sequence includes data collection, data preprocessing, discretization, attribute reduction, reduction filtering, rule generation, and classification accuracy. Historical EMI noise data, colleted from a famous motherboard company in Taiwan, were used to generate diagnostic rules. Our research result (average diagnostic accuracy of 80% above) shows that the RST model is a promising approach for EMI diagnostic support systems.

An approximate likelihood function for panel data with a mixed ARMA(p, q) remainder disturbance model

Abstract. An approximate likelihood function for panel data with an autoregressive moving‐average (ARMA)(p, q) model remainder disturbance is presented and Whittle's approximate maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is used to yield an asymptotic estimator. Although an asymptotic approach, the power test is quite successful for estimating and testing. In this approach, we do not need to calculate the transformation matrix in exact form. Through the Riemann sum approach, we can construct a simple approximate concentrated likelihood function. In addition, the model is also extended to the restricted maximum likelihood (REML) function, in which the package of Gilmour, Thompson and Cullis [Biometrics (1995) Vol. 51, pp. 1440–1450] is applied without difficulty. In the case study, we implement the model on the characteristic line for the investment analysis of Taiwanese computer motherboard makers.

The engineer's approach to biology

In 1998, computer scientist Ehud Shapiro returned to the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, as a group leader after a five‐year break as a software entrepreneur. At the peak of the Internet boom, it would have been easy to find an exciting topic to pursue in computer science. Instead, Shapiro became interested in the origin of life and began to train himself in molecular biology, which eventually sparked his idea to build computers from biological molecules. His team first constructed a molecular Turing machine based on DNA, restriction nuclease and ligase to perform simple computations (Benenson et al , 2001), soon followed by a more sophisticated system that performs stochastic computations using mRNA molecules as input (Benenson et al , 2004). What seems merely to be the intellectual interest of an Israeli computer scientist—using biological compounds and systems to create logical circuits—has in fact become the hottest area in the biological sciences: synthetic biology. Other engineers are also dropping their soldering guns for micropipettes to rewire genes and genomes with the aim of reprogramming living organisms. “Synthetic biology is the other side of the coin of systems biology,” commented Victor de Lorenzo, Vice Director of the National Centre of Biotechnology in Madrid, Spain. “What you want is to create or recreate systems that have some properties of life from engineering principles.” This includes a range of techniques from recombinant cloning, to synthesizing genomes de novo , to creating completely new entities such as Shapiro's artificial systems. However, more interesting than the technology itself is the ability to create artificial metabolic and regulatory pathways and to test their viability in living systems. It allows scientists to probe the complexity of an organism's innards and thus derive further insights into how cells work. As George Church, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School …

A multiphase PWM converter chip for the advanced microprocessors

The DC–DC converter is a fundamental component of the personal computer motherboard and occupies a number of communication areas. To solve the problem of meeting the power supply requirements of the new microprocessor that requires 40–100A current, lower voltage and higher regulation performance during current transients, a multiphase pulse-width modulator (PWM) converter is designed. Multiphase converters, by distributing the power and load current, results in smaller and lower cost transistors with fewer input and output capacitors. These reductions accrue from the higher effective conversion frequency with higher frequency ripple current due to the phase interleaving process of this topology. The converter provides the complete solution of control, output adjustment and over-current/over-voltage protection for the power supply on a PC motherboard. The chip is designed and fabricated in the 1.2 μm BICMOS process. Test results of the established power system for PC motherboard show that the programmable switching converter has fast transient response, small startup overshoot, high conversion efficiency and high precision of 0.8% under full load and commercial temperature range. It meets the specifications of Intel's VRM9.0 design guideline for the power supply of high performance Pentium IV central processing units.

The Use of Neural Network to Recognize the Parts of the Computer Motherboard

This study suggests a new approach of learning which utilizes the techniques of computer vision to recognize the parts inside the motherboard. The main thrust is to identify different parts of the motherboard using a Hopfield Neural Network. The outcome of the net is compared with the objects stored in the database. The proposed scheme is implemented using bottom -up approach, where steps like edge detection, spatial filtering, image masking..etc are performed in sequence. the scheme is simulated in MATLAB environment where the motherboard is treated as an image.

A performance guarantee heuristic for electronic components placement problems including thermal effects

In this work, Benders decomposition algorithm is used to deal with a computer motherboard design problem. Amongst all the possible formulations for the component placement problem, the chosen one creates an instance of the extensively studied Quadratic Assignment Problem ( QAP). This problem arises as a great challenge for engineers and computer scientists. The QAP inherent combinatorial structure makes the most efficient optimization algorithms to exhibit low performance for real size instances. It is also considered here the important addition of linear costs. This approach is directly responsible for the performance gain presented by our decomposition method. Coupled with the placement problem, it is under investigation the maximum temperature rising on the board surface. In order to solve the Energy Conduction Equation the Finite Volume Method is implemented, becoming possible to derive a secondary quality solution criterion. A set of test instances is then solved and the corresponding results are reported.

Converting a deep-water access reconnaissance television into an autonomous underwater vehicle

This paper describes the re-engineering process involved in converting a manually controlled deep-water access reconnaissance television (DART) into an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). Such a conversion required the rebuilding of the DART's motors, redesigning the motor drivers, the installation of a new camera system, and a complete redesign of the electronics including the implementation of a modern computer motherboard. Mechanical modifications were necessary to install a set of underwater lights, and also to improve the portability and serviceability of the vehicle.

Evaluating the effectiveness of augmented reality displays for a manual assembly task

The focus of this research was to examine how effectively augmented reality displays, generated with a wearable computer, could be used for aiding an operator performing a manual assembly task. Fifteen subjects were asked to assemble a computer motherboard using four types of instructional media: paper manual, computer-aided, opaque augmented reality display, and see-through augmented reality display. The time of assembly and assembly errors were measured for each type of instructional media, and a questionnaire focusing on usability was administered to each subject at the end of each condition. The results of the experiment indicated that the augmented reality conditions were more effective instructional aids for the assembly task than either the paper instruction manual or the computer-aided instruction. The see-through augmented reality display resulted in the fastest assembly times, followed by the opaque augmented reality display, the computer-aided instruction, and the paper instructions respectively. In addition, subjects made fewer errors using the augmented reality conditions compared to the computer-aided and paper instructional media. However, while the two augmented reality conditions were a more effective instructional media when time for assembly was the response measure, there were still some important usability issues associated with the augmented reality technology that were not present in the non-augmented reality conditions.

Taiwan's Rising Star Gambles on Notebook PCs

A company which seven years ago employed just four engineers now has almost 1,000 employees and is Taiwan's largest manufacturer of computer motherboards — the circuit boards which hold most of the chips integral to running a computer.