Introduction to Computer Science (Comp 271) SAMARA UNIVERSITY

Chapter 2 - Hardware 2022

The Computer System (Basic Computer Organization) Indicate the flow of data & information

The computer system refers to the computer itself and all the components Indicate the control exercised by control unit
interconnected to it. Basically, the computer system is categorized into two At the center of computer hardware there is the CPU, sometimes called the
components. processor which executes program instructions and performs the computer
1. Hardware – the physical architecture of the computer or the processing actions.
physical devices that carry out the activities of capturing, • It is part of computer hardware that executes program instructions.
processing, storing and communicating to another computer. • The CPU is like the human brain and it oversee and control all of the
2. Software – the program or instructions that control the activities of the computer.
system. • The CPU manages and coordinates the entire computer including the
Hardware has four categories: input and output units.
1. Processors (CPU) • The CPU is the collection of electronic circuits made up of millions of
2. Input devices transistors placed into integrated circuits.
3. Output devices • Integrated circuits are also called chips or microchips
4. Storage devices • Each transistor is an electrical switch that can be in one of the two states:
I. CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT (CPU) “on” or “off”.
• Small transistors allow more transistors to be packed in one single chip,
thus eliminate the need for separate chips.
Secondary storage

Input Output CPU HAS TWO MAJOR COMPONENTS:

Devices Primary storage Devices 1. Control Unit (CU)
• All computer activities are carried out to instructions the control
unit issue select and interprets program instructions and
Control Unit
supervises that they are executed.
Arithmetic Logic Unit • It has special purpose register and a decoder to perform these
activities.
• Those special purpose register are instruction registers and the
program control register which hold the current instruction and
the address of next instructions to be executed, respectively.
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• The decoder has the necessary circuitry to decode and interpret ones, thus manufacturing strategy is know as upward compatibility
the meaning of every instruction supported by the CPU. and the new CPU is said to be upward comparable with its
• Each instruction is a companied by microcode – very basic predecessors.
directions, that tell the CPU how to do (execute) the instructions. Registers
• The control unit serves as the central nervous system, but it ✓ Are high speed storage area used to temporarily hold small units of
doesn’t actually execute instruction or performs mathematical program instructions and data immediately before, during and after
calculations. execution by the CPU.
• The control unit does not actually execute the instruction (just as ✓ As instruction are integrated and executed by the CPU, there is a
the brain does not do the walking or the talking) rather it instructs moment of integration between the various units of the computer
or directs other processing elements to do so. systems.
Instructions are detailed description of the actions to be carried out during ✓ To handle these processes properly and to facilitate the speed of
input, processing, output, storage and transmission. information transfer, CPU uses special memory unit called registers.
2. Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) ✓ Registers are used to hold information on temporary basis.
• It is the other component of CPU which contains the electronic ✓ It is part of the CPU (not part of the main memory)
circuitry that performs the two activities which is computing ✓ The length of a register equals the number of bits it can store.
capabilities such as Arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, ✓ Most CPU today has 32-bit or 64-bit registers.
division or multiplication) and Logical operations (comparison ✓ The size of the registers which is sometime called the word size or
between two elements either less than, greater than or equal to the word length indicates the amount of data it stores.
other). ✓ Other parameters being the same CPU with 32-bit processor can
• Every CPU has built-in ability to execute a particular set of machine process data twice as fast as one with 16-bit register.
instruction set or instruction set.
Types of Execution of Instruction:
• Most CPU has 200 or more instruction (such as add, subtract,
At the machine level execution of instructions has two phases (the execution
compare) in their instruction set.
of an instruction by CPU, during program execution, normally involves the
• As each processor has a unique instruction set machine language
following steps). Instruction phase (I-phase) and execution phase (E-phase)
program written for one computer, it will generally not run on another
these two phases are further decomposed to four steps:
computer with a different CPU.
1. Fetch instruction
• CPU made by different manufacturer has different instructions set.
• The control unit takes the address of the next program instruction to
• When a new CPU is developed, it is ensured that its instruction set
be executed from the program control register, and reads the
include all the instruction set of its predecessor CPU plus some new
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Chapter 2 - Hardware 2022

instruction from the corresponding memory address, into the ▪ Some CPU can speed up processing by using
instruction register of the control unit. pipelining.
• The control unit then sends the operation part and the address part of ▪ Pipelining is a process where the CPU gets one
the instruction, into decoder and memory address register, instruction decodes another and executes the third at
respectively. the same time.
2. Decode instruction - Input/Output devices
• The instruction is translated into individual commands so the central
processor can understand what is to be done. Decoder interprets the A computer system can be useful, only when it is able to communicate with
instruction, and accordingly the control unit send signals into the its external environment (its user). Input/Output devices abbreviated as I/O
appropriate unit. devices, provide the means of communication between the computer and
• Relevant data is moved form memory to the Register storage. outer world.
• These two steps in which instruction are obtained and translated are
called instruction cycle (I-cycle) and the time it takes to execute the They are also known as peripheral devices. The speed of I/O devices is very
first two steps is referred to as I-time. slow, because it depends on mechanical movement. I/O devices are the
3. Execute instruction devices that connect to your computer.
• The ALU does what it is instructed to do by the control unit. This
II - A. INPUT DEVICES
could involve arithmetic operations or logical comparisons.
4. Storage results
Input devices accept user commands and send them to the computer for
• The results of the execution are stored in Registers or in the memory.
processing. It converts from human readable in to computer can understand.
• As each instruction is executed, the address of the next instruction to Typical input devices are Keyboards, Mouse, Scanners and Microphones,
be executed is automatically loaded into the program control register,
Tracker Ball, Joystick, Light Pen, Digital Camera OMR (Optical Mark
step 1 to 4 are repeated.
Reader), Video Digitizer Barcode reader, etc.
o The last two steps that produce processing result are the
execution cycle (E-cycle) and the time it takes to perform the The most common input devices used by the computer are the keyboard and
last two steps is known as execution time (E-time). the mouse. The keyboard allows the entry of textual information while the
o The four steps or the two cycles together are known as mouse allows the selection of a point on the screen by moving a screen cursor
machine cycle. to the point and pressing a mouse button.
o After a machine cycle is completed for one instruction it will
be repeated for the second instruction, etc.

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Keyboard: -This is a flat board that contains a grid of buttons. Each button The following keys are very important:
can be programmed to follow instructions. An overlay sheet is placed on the The SHIFT keys are used to type capital characters and special characters
grid with an explanation for each button. Keyboards are designed for the labeled on the keys such as ?, !, @, &, #, @, $, *, etc.
input of text and characters and also to control the operation of a computer. Alt and Ctrl are modifier keys that are used in conjunction with other keys to
Pressing a key on the keyboard generates a code that represents the character perform a function.
associated with the key. The key press generated by the keyboard is The Print Screen key is used to print a paper copy of whatever is on the
converted to ASCII format then processed by the computer. screen when the key is pressed (if a printer is attached).
The Pause key temporarily suspends an activity. Pressing the pause key once
The most popular keyboard used today is the101-keys called QWERTY stops the activity, pressing any typing key (except Shift, Caps Lock) resumes
keyboard the activity.
The keyboard also has a status-indicator area. This area has three lights that
The keys on the keyboard are often classified as follows. display the status (On or Off) of Num Lock, Caps Lock, and Scroll Lock.
• Typing Keys: these keys work just like a conventional typewriter. When one of these indicator lights is on, the corresponding mode is on.
These keys include English Alphabets A-Z, digits 0-9, the Enter
key, Space, the backspace key, the Shift key, the Caps Lock key, Computer key boards differ in four important ways.
etc. a. Character- depends on the country in which the Key board is used.
• Function Keys: these keys perform different tasks based on the E.g., in Japan symbolic.
type of software being used. These keys are labeled as F1, F2, …, b. Key arrangement.
and F12. • the arrangement of the keyboard's key may differ
• Numeric Keys: these keys let you enter numerical data more easily • The most common in English specking countries is the QWERTY
when you are working on number intensive tasks. To use this keyboard.
section of the keyboard, make sure that the Num lock key is on. • The other type of key board layout is the Dvorak key board that uses
• Navigation Keys: these are keys that are used to navigate through an arrangement where by the most commonly used letters are placed
your document. The following are navigation keys. in the most accessible places. The home keys are the five English
Page Up, Page Down, Home, End, ,,→,, etc. vowel letters A,O,E,U,I (for the left hand) & the five most often used
• Computer Keys: these are keys not found on typewriters. They consonants (D,H,T,N,S) are the home keys for the right hand.
perform different tasks when used alone or in conjunction with c. Special purpose keys
other keys. • The uses of the special function keys vary from program to program.
Esc, Alt, Ctrl, Print Screen, Scroll lock, Pause, Insert, Delete

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d. Detachability – Most desktop computer have keyboards that can be 1. Mechanical: -has a rubber or metal ball that could rotate in any
detached from the rest of the computer systems: while laptops have direction and came as part of the hardware package
built- in key board.
Mechanical sensor within the mouse detects the direction the ball is rolling
Mouse - It is a small object that can be rolled along a rough flat surface. its and moves the screen pointer accordingly
name derived from its shape, which looks a bit a mouse; its connecting wire
that one can imagine to be the mouse’s tail. 2. Optical mouse uses a light-emitting diode and photodiodes to detect
movement relative to the underlying surface, rather than moving some
When a user rolls the mouse a cross a flat surface, such as on the top of the of its parts as in mechanical mouse. Optical mice have no rolling
table on which the computer is placed, the graphic s cursor moves on the parts.
screen of the video display terminal in the direction of the mouse’s 3. Opto-mechanical: the same as mechanical mouse, but uses optical
movement. sensors to detect motion of the ball.

The graphics cursor, which is used to point and draw, is placed on the screen Scanner: Scanners are of two type, text &image scanner.
as a variety of symbols, such as arrow, a wrist with a pointing finger, etc. Image Scanner is a device that analyzes an image (such as a photograph,
printed text, or handwriting) or converts it to a digital image or a device that
You can move the graphics cursor at a menu item or an icon by moving the can read text or pictures printed on paper and translate the information into a
mouse. Mouse can have as many as three buttons whose function depends on form the computer can use. Save them as files on the computer Scanner is a
what program is running. cheap and common way of getting images into a computer.
Text scanner change text into text while image scanner change text into
Mouse translates movements and button clicks into bits, which are sent into image.
the CPU. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) device
An image scanner has the following limitation for typed or handwritten.
A cursor, a blinking line on the computer screen, indicates the point at which 1. Input document has stored as an image instead of text because of
data or information will be input. The following are some of the devices that stored as an image it requires high storage capacity
are commonly used to input data to the computer: 2. OCR, over come this limitation
3. It covert the bit map images of characters equivalent ASCII codes
Types of mouse
Digital Camera is an electronic device used to capture(take pictures) and
store photographs electronically in a digital format that can be read by a
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computer, instead of using photographic film like conventional cameras, or and check-boxes such as National Lottery number selection sheets and
recording images in an analog format to magnetic tape like many video multiple-choice exam papers
cameras.You can then transfer the images directly from your camera on to
your computer. II-B. OUTPUT DEVICES

Microphone - A microphone is a device to input sound information and can Output devices accept results or data generated by the computer and present
be used with a voice recognition system which processes the information this information to the user in a variety of different means (both audio and
i.e., used to record sound. The sound is then saved as a sound file on the visual). It display in human readable form in soft copy or hard copy.
computer.
1. Soft copy output:- it is electronic copy &Temporary in nature.
Video Digitizer - this takes an image from a video camera or television and 2. Hard copy output:- paper based & permanent in nature.
converts it so that it can be used by, and stored on, a computer. Video
Typical output devices are printers, monitors and speakers, LCD projector.
sequences captured using video digitizers are often used in multimedia
presentations.
Common output formats are printed-paper saved disk file, sound, video and
on-screen documents. They are all of those things that let your computer 'talk'
Barcode Reader - Barcodes are different groups of vertical bars that can be
back to you and present information. The most common output device is a
read by a barcode reader. Barcodes are printed on nearly every product that
monitor which is usually a Cathode Ray Tube device which can display text
you can buy. Shops use barcodes because they enable the shops to maintain
and graphics. If hard-copy output is required then some form of printer is
their stock control system. The barcode contains the product details such as
used.
product name, size, manufacturer, country of origin. The price is looked up
from the shop's database. When the bar code is scanned, the shop's stock is Monitors or Visual Display Units (VDUs): it displays information in soft
automatically reduced by one copy.
It translates bits sent to it into shapes and colors you can see on the screen.
MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Reader) - magnetic ink characters are the
Visual Display Units (VDU) or monitors are used to visually interface with
strange looking numbers that appear at the bottom of cheques. Banks use
the computer and are similar in appearance to a television. It takes more
MICR to read the numbers from the bottom of cheques to obtain data such as
power.
name, branch, account numbers and bank sort codes.
Visual Display Units display images and text which are made up of small
blocks of colored light called pixels. The resolution of the screen improves as
OMR (Optical Mark Reader) - this read marks made by pencil on a printed
form into the computer. OMR systems are suited to reading pre-printed forms
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the number of pixels is increased. Most monitors have a 4:3 width to height
ratio. 1. Dot-matrix printers
These are the most common monitor's device These kinds of Printers are not so common today. This is the cheapest and
Desktop monitors which are also known as Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) noisiest of the printer family, and are used when carbon copies or duplicates
Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD) or flat panel which are also known as Thin need to be made, such as for wage slips. Also, they are useful in dirty
Film Transistors (TFT), used in portable computer like laptop environments such as a garage because they are much sturdier than the other
two types of printer. The impact of the print head against the printer ribbon
Characteristics of CRT monitors imprints ink dots on the paper which form human-readable characters. The
standard of print obtained is poor.
1. Size 14, 17, 21…inch, cost depend on size of the monitor. Dot-matrix printers vary in print resolution and overall quality with either 9
2. Resolution: - it depends on the number of bit, number of pixels or 24-pin print heads. The more pins per inch, the higher the print resolution.
(dpi). Pixel =picture element. Most dot-matrix printers have a maximum resolution around 240 dpi (dots
3. Refresh rate: measured by hertz, from 60 to 75 hertz. per inch). The speed is usually 30 - 550 characters per second (cps) i.e., fast
4. Color: monochrome (white &black) and color: - Red, Green, printing speed.
Blue (RGB). Dot matrix printers are character printer, which print one character at a time.
They form character& all kinds of image as a pattern of dots
Printers 2. Daisy-wheel Printers
If you have ever seen or worked with a manual typewriter before, then you
You can print out information that is in the computer onto paper (hard copy). understand the technological concept behind daisy-wheel printers. These
There are different kinds of printers which vary in their speed and print printers have print heads composed of metallic or plastic wheels cut into
quality. The two main types of printer are impact and non-impact. petals. Each petal has the form of a letter (in capital and lower-case), number,
Impact Printers use a print head containing a number of metal pins which or punctuation mark on it. When the petal is struck against the printer ribbon,
strike an inked ribbon placed between the print head and the paper. Some the resulting shape forces ink onto the paper. Daisy-wheel printers are loud
print heads have only 9 pins to make the dots to build up a character; some and slow. They cannot print graphics, and cannot change fonts unless the
have 24 pins which produce a better resolution. Impact printers are the oldest print wheel is physically replaced.
print technologies still in active production. Impact printers are most 3. Drum or Line Printers
functional in specialized environments where low-cost printing is essential. Another type of impact printer somewhat similar to the daisy-wheel is the
The three most common forms of impact printers are dot-matrix, daisy-wheel, line printer. However, instead of a print wheel, line printers have a
and line printers. mechanism that allows multiple characters to be simultaneously printed on
the same line. Dram printers are line printers, which print one line at a time
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Line printer are much faster than dot-matrix or daisy-wheel printers; ✓ projectors: - use for presentation (present on white board or white close)
however, they tend to be quite loud, have limited multi-font capability, and
often produce lower print quality than more recent printing technologies. III. STORAGE UNIT
Non-impact printers are much quieter than impact printers as their printing Two types of Storage:
heads do not strike the paper. 1. Primary Storage
Several different technologies have been used to provide a variety of printers. 2. Secondary Storage
The main types of non-impact printer are:
1. Laser jet Printers use a laser beam and dry powdered ink to produce a 1. Primary Storage
fine dot matrix pattern. This method of printing can generate about 4 pages of Primary storage (memory) holds the immediate instructions that are to be
A4 paper per minute. Laser printers produce a very high-quality output, are performed by the CPU. IT is therefore very important that the primary
very quiet and very fast. Laser color printers are quite expensive to buy. storage can be accessed quickly so that the CPU is not waiting for the next
Laser jet printer is a page printer which print one page at a time set of instructions.
2. Ink-jet printers offer black and white or color printing with reduced
levels of quality and speed. Color ink jet printers are cheaper to buy than RAM
color laser printers. Inkjet printers use color cartridges which combine RAM (Random Access memory) is a temporary storage device for the
magenta, yellow and cyan inks to create color tones. A black cartridge is also current data and instructions that are required by the current program being
used for crisp monochrome output. Inkjet are character printers, which form processed by the CPU and for storing the results. Therefore, RAM can both
characters& all kinds of images by sparing small drops of ink on to the paper. be written to and read from. It is called Random Access because the time
This method of printing can generate up to 200 cps and allows for good taken to access data within the RAM does not depend upon the location at
quality, cheap color printing. which the data is stored. A typical RAM has an access time of 70 nsec that
Plotters means that 14 million words of data can be accessed from the RAM in one
A plotter can be used to produce high quality, accurate, A3 size or bigger second (the term word will be defined in Section 8.1). However, RAM is
drawings. They are usually used for Computer Aided Design (CAD) and volatile, which means that any data stored in it is lost when the computer is
Computer Aided Manufacture (CAM) applications such as printing out plans turned off or when there is a power failure. RAM comes in varying sizes,
for houses or car parts. Plotters are ideal out put devices for architects, measured in megabytes (MB). The more RAM you have, the faster your
engineers, city planers, others who need to routinely generate high precision, applications will run.
hard copy, graphic out put for widely varying sizes. SRAM (static RAM) and DRAM (dynamic RAM)
Other devices Using slots attached to the motherboard it is possible to increase the amount
✓ Speakers:- convert text information in to spoken sentience of RAM available to your computer system.

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• HDD’s come with varying storage capacities, measured in gigabytes

ROM (GB).
ROM (Read Only Memory) can only be read from. One use of ROM is to Compact Disk Drive
store the start up instructions for the computer when it is turned on. Compact disk (CD) drives allow data to be read
Whenever a computer is turned on it needs to follow a programmed sequence from compact disks. A CD is usually about 12
of events such as checking that all the hardware is working and then loading inches in diameter and data is transferred to or
the files of the operating system into RAM (the operating system is stored on from a CD by using a laser. A typical CD has a
the hard disk drive). This process is known as booting the system. storage capacity of 650 MB. There are 3 types of
• PROM-Programmable Read Only Memory compact disk
• EPROM-Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory
• EEPROM- Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory ❖ CD-ROM - Compact Disk – Read Only Memory. They are mainly
used by manufacturers to distribute their software. Therefore,
2. Secondary Storage Microsoft Windows (operating system) and Office (applications) are
Secondary storage devices are a permanent storage area for your data. They supplied to the user on CD-Rom with the programs then being
allow a large amount of data to be stored, although the time taken to access it installed onto the HDD of the computer.
is longer than that taken to access primary storage (although the time
difference is not usually noticeable) ❖ CD-R – Compact Disk Recordable. Allows the computer user to
Hard Disk Drive write data to a CD. Each area of the CD can only be written to once
Most computers have one hard disk drive (HDD) installed within the systems and once data is written to the CD it cannot be removed. The CD can
case. They are used to store the operating system, applications (Word, Excel, be written to as many times as the user likes until the CD is full.
Turbo C etc) and files written by the user. The HDD is usually a stack of ❖ CD-RW – Compact Disk – Re-Writeable. Allows the user to perform
rigid magnetic disks contained within a sealed unit so that dust and dirt will multiple read/write operations on the same CD until it is full. Data
not damage the disks. Data is transferred to or from the disk using read/write can be later removed from the CD-RW and other data placed on it.
heads close to the surface of each disk (top and bottom) that detect magnetic Digital Versatile Disk Drive
variations on the disk surfaces as they rotate. Digital video disk (DVD) drives look similar to a CD except that they can
The operating system uses letters to identify the different types of secondary store from 4.7 – 17 GB of data. A standard DVD can store over 2 hours of
storage installed in the computer. The HDD is allocated the letter C and is high-quality video and CD quality audio.
known as the root drive. It is possible to separate the HDD to include virtual
drives D,E etc according to the users wishes.

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