09-10-2010, 05:27 PM
Computer Organization
Hardware and Software
Computing Systems
Computers have two kinds of components:
Hardware, consisting of its physical devices (CPU, memory, bus, storage devices, ...)
Software, consisting of the programs it has (Operating system, applications, utilities, ...)
Hardware: CPU
Central Processing Unit (CPU):
the “brain” of the machine
location of circuitry that performs arithmetic and logical ML statements
measurement: speed (roughly) in megahertz (millions of clock-ticks per second)
examples: Intel Pentium, AMD K6, Motorola PowerPC, Sun SPARC,
Hardware: RAM
Random Access Memory (RAM)
“main” memory, which is fast, but volatile...
analogous to a person’s short-term memory.
many tiny “on-off” switches: for convenience
“on” is represented by 1, “off” by 0.
each switch is called a binary digit, or bit.
8 bits is called a byte.
210 bytes =1024 bytes is called a kilobyte (1K)
220 bytes is called a megabyte (1M).
For more information about this article,please follow the link:
http://googleurl?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ve...zation.ppt&ei=mlewTKSID4OAvgOsoJj_Bg&usg=AFQjCNHTpeiUE4pP2B5LtbFHNELXpzVP5A