Shear zone. A shear zone is a very important structural discontinuity surface in the Earth's crust and upper mantle. It forms as a response to inhomogeneous deformation partitioning strain into planar or curviplanar high-strain zones. Intervening (crustal) blocks stay relatively unaffected by the deformation.
A computer-on-a-chip combines the microprocessor core (CPU), memory, and I/O (input/output) lines onto one chip. The computer-on-a-chip patent, called the microcomputer patent at the time, U.S. Patent 4,074,351, was awarded to Gary Boone and Michael J. Cochran of TI.
Since 2005, computer CPU chip makers have increasingly adopted the use of multiple cores to increase performance. Each core runs a separate computing task, so the computer gets more work done. Before the rush to multi-core CPUs, computer designers sometimes put two, four or more single-core CPUs into a system.