A VERY simple description of what's in a computer
Contents
CPU
A computer system is made up of many interacting components centrally controlled by the main processor or CPU.
You will notice that the CPU is in the centre of the diagram - this shows it's dominance within your computer system. The CPU is the 'brain' and performs most of the processing within your system.
Although the CPU is the most powerful part of the system it is limited in what it can do - essentially it can move 1's and 0's around and perform simple mathematical operations on those numbers.
TopThere are various manufacturers of CPUs - the most widely known being Intel and AMD.
You may recognise one of these names from the description of your computer - e.g. Dell Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz.
Dell is the manufacturer of the computer.
Intel is the manufacturer of the main processor or CPU.
Pentium 4 is the model of the CPU.
3.4GHz is the speed the CPU operates at - in this case it can perform 3.4 billion operations per second.
Controller
A controller is a piece of hardware that 'controls' the operation of equipment separate to the CPU. There are different controllers which control related equipment (e.g. the disk controller controls the operation of storage devices attached to the system).
When the CPU needs to 'use' one of these external devices it will give the controller a command. The controller is then responsible for translating that command into one appropriate for the target device. The controller is also responsible for ensuring that any result or information returned from the device is relayed back to the CPU.
For example, the CPU may send a command to the I/O controller to write some information to the Hard Disk drive. The command and the information will be sent to the disk controller which will translate it into something that the Hard Disk drive understands. The Hard Disk drive will perform the command and tell the controller whether it was successful or not, the controller will then report whether the information was saved on the Hard Disk successfully.
Memory
Memory is the workspace that the CPU uses. This is where all the information and data that the CPU is working on is stored.
Because memory is so closely tied to the operation of the CPU they are linked directly via the system bus.
A bus is a path along which information travels within a computer.
There are various buses in a computer that connect the different components.
The main system bus connects the CPU to the components it needs to communicate with.
Being directly connected to the main memory enables the CPU to rapidly read and write information in memory.
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