Hardware-specific questions

I'm good at programming yet I feel like I don't know enough about the architecture of the hardware I'm working on.

• What does the Northbridge on the main开发者_开发技巧board do?

• What does the L2 cache of my processor do?

• Can Windows XP use multiple processors? Not in terms of concrete multitasking in all programs but using the capacity of all cores if needed instead of always only one core.

• How can my processor/mainboard interact with multiple kinds of graphics/sound cards?

North bridge control Memory usually, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northbridge_(computing) L2 cache info http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cache-size-matter,1709.html

etc etc

These answers can be resolved/answered via google and 15min :)