A converter that is directly connectable to an AC power source includes a rectifier stage for rectifying a network voltage, a power factor correction pre-regulating circuit supplied with the rectified network voltage for producing a DC voltage of a predetermined nominal value on an output node, and a DC-DC converter. The BiCMOS structure includes an SOI substrate having a bottom Si-containing layer, a buried insulating layer located atop the bottom Si-containing layer, a top Si-containing layer atop the buried insulating layer and a sub-collector which is located in an upper surface of the bottom Si-containing layer. Also, by using the pre-defined computation function to establish a relation among the values stored in a plurality of characteristic point addresses and a specific point address so that he device end can determine whether a proprietary command is received. The frequency of the signal is then set to the estimated angular frequency divided by the product of 2 and the signal delay period. The interface allocates the graphics resources across multiple graphics clients, processes commands for access to the graphics resources from the graphics clients, and resolves conflicts for the graphics resources among the clients.