1. Computer Systems
Nowadays computer systems are found everywhere.
But before going deep into the computer system let's first know, what is computer?
A computer is a system made up of two major components that are hardware and software.
Computer hardware is a physical components like keyboard, mouse, printer etc, where as the software component is a collection of programs (instructions) That allows the hardware to do their job to function their respective work.
Fig 1 A Computer System
1.1 Computer Hardware:-
Computer hardware components of the computer system consists of some parts that are divided below:-
- input devices
- central Processing Unit
- primary storage
- output devices
- auxiliary storage devices
a) Input Devices
Now let us talk about Input devices in detail
When we think about input devices, what comes in our mind? keyboards and Mouse right? Yes they are the input devices when we connect the keyboard with our system then it acts as input devices and whatever we type the system shows as output.
There are some other examples of input devices are too like a stylus, touch screen etc these all are the input devices.
b) CPU (Central Processing Unit)
The second is , CPU (Central Processing Unit) This is responsible for executing instructions, set of commands such as arithmetic calculations, comparison between two data and moment of the data inside the system or we can say flow of the data inside the systems.
In today's era a computer may have one, two or more than two CPUs.
c) Primary Storage
Third is Primary storage it is known as primary storage because data is not stored for permanent and when we turn off our personal computers or when we log off from our time sharing computer our data is erased. It is also known as a main memory . In this case we know our programs and data is a stored for temporary during the data processing.
d) Output Devices
Output devices are any peripheral devices that connected along the computers which convert the computer language into the language which is understandable by the humans. We can say that output devices allow computers to communicate with users and other devices. We know that the output shows on the computers screen and which we refer as a soft copy.
And when we print it from the printer then it is known as a hard copy.
e) Auxiliary Storages
Auxiliary storage the secondary storage or we can say that the permanent storage, because in this programs and Data are stored permanently. When we turn off the computers our programs and data doesn't erase it is saved in our secondary storage and remain safe and ready to use next time.
Auxiliary storage is used for both input and output but user cannot interact directly with them.
1.2 Computer Software
Computer software has further categories into two categories.
- System software
- Application Software
System software is responsible for computer resources it provides interface between hardware and the user but doesn't entertain users directly. But on the other hand, application software is directly responsible for helping users to solve their problem.
System software
System Software is the any program that manage the system hardware or that can be used to maintain the computer in some way so that it can run more efficiently.
The program is further classified into three forms :-
- The operating system
- System Support
- System Development
Application Software
Application software basically communicate with computers to accomplish any assigned task.
Like word processing or drawing for users etc.
Application software is further classified in to two classes:-
- General-purpose software
- Application specific software.
Application software needs systems software to work or to perform any task given by users. But system software doesn't need application software to perform any task.
System software provide platform to application software to process their task on it.
Compilers, interpretos, Assemblers, etc are the example of systems software which converts or interprets the programming language to computer understanble langauge.
Now here I have used two terms compiler and interpreter. Now you may think what are these, well these are the system software as I mentioned above but they both are different from each other.
Inshort compiler compile the whole code in a single time but interpreters take single line of code at a time to interpret.
Compiler perform task faster while interpreter take little time as compared to compiler.
Compiler is more efficient as compared to interpreter.
For more clear knowledge we will discus their comparison table, so our doubt will clear.
