http://live.pirillo.com/ – A bottleneck, when speaking about computer hardware, refers to the slowest components of the computer. These slower components generally hold data back from the faster components.

By removing a bottleneck you can make the entire system run faster. If you have a fast CPU, video card, and hard drive, but you only have a small amount of slow RAM, you can make the entire system run faster by upgrading the speed and amount of RAM in that machine.

Likewise, if you have a lot of RAM but a slow CPU, upgrading to a faster CPU will allow the system to run faster.

Where does the term "bottleneck" come from? If you look at a bottle, you'll notice that the neck is generally narrower than the body of the bottle. This narrow neck slows the flow of liquid down, so enough though you have a ton of liquid in a bottle, only a small amount can trickle out.

Maybe that's not the best explanation of a bottleneck – do you have a better one?

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