September 7th, 2016. Wednesday.
Today we have learnt about the system unit components. The system unit itself is a case that contains electronic components of the computer used to process data. The inside of the system unit on a desktop personal computer includes drive bays, power supply, sound card, video card, processor, and memory. The motherboard is the main circuit board of the system unit. In other words, the motherboard is basically a computer chip that contains integrated circuits.
The processor, however, also called the central processing unit, interprets and carries out the basic instructions that operate a computer. A processor usually contains a control unit and an arithmetic logic unit. Type of processor may vary, such as a multi-core processor, dual-core processor, and a quad-core processor.
- The control unit is the component of the processor that directs and coordinates most of the operations in the computer.
- The arithmetic logic unit performs arithmetic, comparison and other operations.
For every instruction, a processor repeats a set of four basic operations, which comprise a machine cycle. Four basic steps involves in a machine cycle includes fetch, decode, execute, and store. Most current personal computers support pipe-lining. This process begins fetching a second instruction before it completes the machine cycle for the first instruction.
The processor contains registers, that temporarily hold data and instructions. The system clock on the other hand controls the timing of all computer operations. The pace of the system clock is called the clock speed, and is measured in gigahertz.
A processor chip generates heat that could cause the chip to burn up. Therefore processors normally require some additional cooling technologies, such as heat sink, and liquid cooling technology.
Next, we have learnt about data representation. These include the understanding of analog signals and digital signals. Analog signals are continuous and vary in strength and quality. Whereas digital signals are in one of two states, which are on or off. Most computer we have today are digital.
The binary system uses two unique digits, which is 1 and 0 only. The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is the most widely used coding scheme to represent data.
Furthermore, we have studied about the memory. The memory consists of electronic components that store instructions waiting to be executed by the processor, data needed by those instructions, and the results of processing data. The memory also stores three basic categories of items, which are the operating system and other system software, application programs, data being processed, and the resulting information. Each location in memory has an address. Memory size is measured in kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, or even terabytes.
The system unit contains two types of memory, which is the volatile memory and the nonvolatile memory respectively. The volatile memory loses its contents when the power is turned off, example includes RAM. The nonvolatile memory does not lose its contents when the power is removed, example includes ROM, flash memory, and CMOS.
There are three basic types of RAM chips, which are:
- Dynamic RAM
- Static RAM
- Magnet resistive RAM
- The amount of RAM necessary in a computer often depends on the types of software you plan to use.
Are you using laptop or PC?
ReplyDeleteLaptop, unfortunately. My house do not own a PC.
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