Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
com
bu
s.
co
Computers can be classified as digital, analog and hybrid computers based on the
technology on which they are built. Analog computers are normally built using
Operational Amplifiers. Digital computers are built using digital logic gates . Hybrid
computers will have mix of analog and digital components.
.a
lls
yl
la
First generation digital computers were built using vacuum tubes. They were very
slow, had very small memory capacity and used to occupy a large space. Second
generation computers used transistors. Third generation computers used Integrated
circuits(IC). As there was tremendous progress in the IC technology, VLSI (very large
Scale Integration Circuits) chips became very common and present day computers are
built using VLSI chips. Microprocessors which are the heart of the digital computer are
built using VLSI chips. Intel is one of the important manufacturer of the microprocessor
chips and Pentium is the family of recent microprocessors which are used as the CPUs of
present day computers.
Based on the size and capability, digital computers are also classified as
Mainframe computers, Mini computers and microcomputers. Super computers are the
ones which have tremendous processing power, memory capacity and work very fast.
Several microprocessors are interconnected to carry out complex task in less time. PC is
the acronym used for Personal Computers. Present day PCs are very powerful and their
processors will have several cores of execution units. These are called multi core
processor chips.
Multi core is the recent technology in processors where more than one core of
central processing unit is made available on a single microprocessor chip. The multiple
cores execute different portions of the application program simultaneously and thus
improving the performance of the system. If there are two cores on a microprocessor chip
then it is called dual core processor.
Hardware Components of a Digital Computer:
Processor, Input/Output devices, and memory are the important components of a
digital computer. Processor will have ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) and Control
1
vtu.allsyllabus.com
www.allsyllabus.com
Unit(CU) as its components. Memory can be subdivided into primary and secondary
memory.
Processor is responsible for fetching and executing program instructions. Memory
is where data and program are stored. If there is no distinction between data and program
memory and if memory is separate from that of CPU then it is called Von Neumann
architecture (Harvard architecture is one where there is separate storage for program and
data and separate pathways to connect to them). Stored program digital computer is one
which stores both program and data in a read-write random access memory. Von
Neumann and stored program are two terminologies which are normally used
interchangeably.
yl
Main
Cache
Registers
w
.a
lls
Secondary
la
bu
s.
Memory
co
In the memory, the information is stored in terms of bits or bytes or words. Byte is
made of 8 bits and word is a collection of 16, 32 or 64 bits. Memory can be volatile or
non volatile. Information present in Volatile memory is lost as soon as the power is
turned off. Figure-1 gives the classification of memory devices in a digital computer.
ROM
Internal
External
RAM
2
vtu.allsyllabus.com
www.allsyllabus.com
bu
s.
co
memories are volatile in nature. External cache is mounted on the motherboard. Registers
are small memory units internally available within the processor.
Input devices accept data and control signals from the user. Output devices
communicate the processed data to the user. Examples of input devices are keyboard,
mouse, pen based systems, data scanners, game controllers, voice recognition systems
etc. Examples of output devices are Monitor, Printer, Plotter, sound system etc.
Central Processing Unit (CPU) -It is the brain of the computer. It performs the bulk of
the data processing operations. The function of the processor is to fetch the instruction
from memory, examine (decode) the instruction and execute the instructions. It consists
of Control unit, Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) and registers. Control unit is responsible
for fetching the instructions from memory and interpreting them. ALU performs
arithmetic and logical operations. Registers are very high speed memory units
for storing very small amount of data. Program counter, Instruction register, Memory
address register, memory buffer register and accumulator are some examples of registers.
Bus is a collection of wires. They may be unidirectional or bidirectional. Bus is used
to connect different parts of a computer. Bus may be serial or parallel. USB is an
example of a serial bus. Bus connecting computer and a dot matrix printer is normally
a parallel bus. Parallel bus carries several bits at a time. These bits may indicate
instruction, data, address or commands. Bus width and Bus speed are the two major
components for performance measure of a computer.
.a
lls
yl
la
Software
Collection of computer programs, procedures and documentation that perform some
tasks on a computer is called software. Software can be categorized as application
software and system software. -Application software is developed to solve a specific
problem. Examples: Notepad, Wordpad, Microsoft excel, MSAccess etc.. System
software provides a convenient environment for program development and execution.
Examples: Operating system, assemblers, compilers, interpreters, loaders and linkers
etc.
Compiler converts a high level program to a binary level program called object code.
Interpreter also does the same thing, but line by line and it also executes the line of code.
3
vtu.allsyllabus.com
www.allsyllabus.com
co
yl
la
bu
s.
Computing Environments
There are various computing environments depending on the way in which the
computers are used in an application. Personal Computing Environment is a Single user
system . In Time Sharing Environment, all computing is done by the central computer.
Client Server Environment will have single Server and several clients. Distributed
Computing Environment (Eg: e-Bay auction service on the internet) uses several servers
and clients.
.a
lls
Types of Programming
A computer program can be written in either High level programming language or
assembly language or machine language. While High level language is comparatively
easy to use, Machine language is most difficult. BASIC, FORTRAN, C, Pascal, C++,
JAVA, C#, Visual Basic etc. are examples of High level languages. Machine language is
made up of 1s and 0s. Assembly language is made of mnemonics and has complexity in
between the high level and machine level languages.
Typical programs are written in sequential manner. This means that, the order of
execution of instructions is same as the order in which the instructions are written.
Control statements define the flow of program. In the recent multicore processors, to
extract the full benefit of the architecture, we need to write multithreaded parallel
programs. This can be done using OpenMP pragmas in the C (or FORTRAN) programs.
Parallel multithreaded programs also can be written using pthreads and MPI (Message
Passing Interface).
A program can be designed in a top-down or bottom-up fashion. Procedure oriented
languages like Pascal and C help us in writing top-down modular programs. Object
oriented languages like C++ and Java are useful in writing bottom-up programs.
A Computer Program is a series of steps specified for the solution to a problem, which a
computer can understand and execute. A software application is a collection of computer
program which address a real life problem for its end users. A software project is an
undertaking to create a software application by writing computer programs.
4
vtu.allsyllabus.com
www.allsyllabus.com
.a
lls
yl
la
bu
s.
co
5
vtu.allsyllabus.com