The CPUs 604 may perform the necessary operations by transitioning from one discrete physical state to the next through the manipulation of switching elements that differentiate between and change these states. Switching elements may generally include electronic circuits that maintain one of two binary states, such as flip-flops, and electronic circuits that provide an output state based on the logical combination of the states of one or more other switching elements, such as logic gates. These basic switching elements may be combined to create more complex logic circuits including registers, adders-subtractors, arithmetic logic units, floating-point units, and the like.

The chipset 606 may provide an interface between the CPUs 604 and the remainder of the components and devices on the baseboard. The chipset 606 may provide an interface to a random access memory (RAM) 608 used as the main memory in the computer 600. The chipset 606 may provide an interface to a computer-readable storage medium, such as a read-only memory (ROM) 620 or non-volatile RAM (NVRAM) (not shown), for storing basic routines that may help to start up the computer 600 and to transfer information between the various components and devices. The ROM 620 or NVRAM may also store other software components necessary for the operation of the computer 600 in accordance with the embodiments described herein.