In this chapter I will start from the very beginning, and discuss how computers work from the ground up. This will give the beginner a good understanding of how computers work. If all of this seems familiar you might consider just skimming or even skipping this introductory mini-guide.
All computers, from the first room-sized mainframes, to today's powerful desktop, laptop and even hand-held PCs, perform the same general operations on information. What changes over time is the information handled, how it is handled, how much is moved around, and how quickly and efficiently it can be done. The sections below describe the primary jobs that computers perform.
When you think about a computer and what it does, you of course think that it.. well.. computes. And this is indeed one part of its job. Computing is really another term for "information transformation"--changing information from one form to another. The computer spends a goodly amount of its time doing exactly this: performing math operations (changing numbers into other numbers), and translating information from one form to another (for example when a game determines using mathematics, what to display on the screen for you to see).
One special form of information the computer processes is its instructions. These are the commands that programmers give the computer to tell it what to do. Every time you do anything with a computer, you are really talking to a program which is talking to the computer. The language that computers speak, which is called machine language, is very complex and hard to understand, which is why it is hidden from all but the most technically-proficient engineers. Even most programmers never use machine language directly.
The key part of the computer that processes information is of course, the processor.
No comments:
Post a Comment