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 Computer Science Disciplines

What are the different branches of it?

 Networks, telecommunications software, security of information exchanges.

 Embedded systems, robotics.
 Images, sound, multimedia, human/machine interfaces, computer graphics ...
 Scientific computing, optimization, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, processing
languages ...

 Some areas of application of computer science

Where can we apply computer science?

 Business Informatics:

Compatibility, invoicing, payroll, inventory and production system management, customer

relationship management, banks and stock exchange, decision support ...

 Industrial and technological computing:

Assisted design and manufacturing, modeling and simulation of complex systems,

embedded computing, telecommunications and networks ...

 Internet:

e-commerce, information search, security ...

 And also scientific disciplines, medical, humanities and social sciences, arts ... 

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CHAPTER 2: THE COMPUTER

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INTRODUCTION

The understanding of computer vocabulary is the most important starting point in the
mastery of the computer tool and especially the use of a personal computer. The choice of a
computer is to choose each element that composes it and know the characteristics. This chapter
is therefore intended to give the visibility of the main components of a computer, to explain its
operation and to give the main characteristics to know.

1. Computer Overview

A computer is a set of electronic circuits used to manipulate data in binary form (in the
form of bits 0 and 1).

The word computer is a literal translation of "computer" which means calculator. A

machine capable of manipulating binary information can be called a computer. There are
several types of computer that can be classified according to size and performance. These
include:

 Supercomputers or supercomputers: which are the computers designed to achieve

the highest possible performance with the techniques known during their design (in
particular the speed of calculation). The science of supercomputers or
supercomputers is called high-performance computing. Example: IBM Blue Gene
(250,000 processors)
 Mainframes which are high-power computers that can have large capacity
memories, as well as many storage units in order to process many operations
simultaneously.
 Computers: in this type, we can use computers in SMEs.
 Mini-computers: in this category, we find PCs (laptops and desktops).
 Microcomputers: a category of small computers, the central unit consists of one or
more processors. Computers have very small size, reduced storage capacity and
medium-sized memory that are as fast on the processing they perform.

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2. Constitution of the computer

2.1.Description

The components of a computer can be replaced by other components that may have
different characteristics. It is therefore said that a computer is a set of modular electronic
elements. These components are built around a main board called a motherboard with a few
integrated circuits and many electronic components, such as capacitors, resistors. All these
components are soldered on the motherboard with a few integrated circuits and many electronic
components, such as capacitors, resistors. All of these are surveyed on the board and are
connected by PCB connections and a large number of connectors.

The motherboard is housed in a box with slots for storage devices, as well as buttons to
control the powering on of the computer and a number of LEDs to control the operating status
of the device and the activities of the various components.

On the back surface, the case offers openings vis-à-vis the expansion boards and the
input/output interfaces connected to the motherboard.

Finally, the box houses a power supply commonly called power supply,responsible for
providing a stable and continuous electric current to all the constituent elements of the
computer. The power supply is therefore used to convert the alternating current of the electrical
network(220V or 110V)or into direct current of 5V for the components of the computer, and
12V for some devices (harddisk, drive...).

We call Central Unit, the set composed of the case and the elements it embeds. The CPU
must be connected to a set of external devices. A computer is usually composed of at least a
central unit, a monitor, a mouse and a keyboard. But it is possible to connect a variety of external
devices on the input/output interfaces (serial ports, parallel ports, USB port...).

2.2.The motherboard

Themotherboard is the main building block of the computer. It is on this board that the
essential elements are connected or welded. It contains embedded elements (integrated into the
board), namely:

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 The chipset (Chipset): it is an electronic circuit responsible for coordinating the
exchanges between the various components of the computer (processor,
memory). Since the chipset is integrated into the motherboard, it is important to
choose a motherboard with a recent chipset, in order to guarantee the PC a
maximum chance of being able to evolve.
 The Clock and the CMOS Battery

The Real Time Clock(RTC) is a circuit responsible for synchronizing system

signals. When we turn off the computer, the power supply stops supplying power
to the motherboard. When unplugged, the S.E is still on time although the unit
was not powered for some time.

In reality, even when the PC is unplugged, or a power outage occurs, an electronic

circuit called CMOS(Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor)sometimes
called BIOS CMOS that keeps certain information about the system including
time and date. The CMOS is continuously powered by a battery (Flat Battery) also
located on the motherboard.

 The BIOS (Basic Input Output System): is the basic program that serves as the
interface between the motherboard and the S.E. The BIOS is stored in the ROM
(Read Only Memory),so uses the data contained in the CMOS to know the
hardware configuration of the system.
It is possible to configure the BIOS, thanks to an interface called BIOS setup
(configuration) accessible at startup by simply pressing a key chosen according
to the manufacturer. In reality, the BIOS setup only serves as an interface for
configuring the data stored in the CMOS.
 The System Bus: this is called a Bus, the channel for transferring data between
two elements. A bus is characterized by its width, that is, the number of bits that
can be transmitted simultaneously, and by its frequency.

To characterize a motherboard, several factors can be used:

 Its Footprint Factor: It represents the geometry and dimensions of the

motherboard. In order to provide motherboards that can adapt to different

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boxes, standards have been developed: AT Baby cards, Full format cards, ATX,
TPX...
 Chipset.
 Type of processor media.

The different components of the motherboard do not communicate by a single bus. There
is a bus to communicate with the hard disk, a bus for the graphics card, a bus for the processor,
another for the memory... As a result, many buses have been invented and an average computer,
with its keyboard, mouse, screen and central unit contains an impressive number and buses:

 The SM Bus; is a bus invented by Intel that is used to communicate with fans,
temperature probes (Temperature sensor), voltage probes present in the
computer.
 IBOs; used for sound cards and formerly for graphics cards.
 USB: bus to connect with devices plugged into USB ports.
 AGP buses; used for graphics cards.
 P-ATA buses, (eSATA, eSATAp, ATAoE...)
 Low Pin Count buses: provides access to the keyboard, mouse, disk drive,
parallel port, and serial port.
 ISA buses (EISA) used for expansion cards.

Depending on the transfer mode, there are two types of buses, namely serial buses and
parallel buses.

Serial buses can exchange only one bit at a time. Those that can exchange several bits at
the same time are parallel buses. In our computers, the buses that connect the processor to
memory (or memory to peripherals) are parallel buses and are usually divided into three
subbuses.

Address Bus: Address Transfer

Data Bus: Data Transfer
Command Bus: Contains the Input/Output bit and handles commands between
buses.

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Depending on the mode of data exchange (direction of transfer) between a transmitter
(the component that sends the data) and a receiver, there are 3 modes:

 The Simplex.

On a simplex bus, the information only goes one way. So we have two possible cases,
either the information is transmitted from a device to a component (processor), or the
information is transmitted from the component to the device.

 The Half-duplex.

On a Half-duplex bus, it is possible to be a transmitter or receiver depending on the

situation. On the other hand, it is impossible to be both transmitter and receiver.

 The Full Duplex

A Full-Duplex bus allows you to be both transmitter and receiver. The trick of the buses
to the Full-duplex is very simple, just group two simplex buses together, so we will have a bus
for the emission, and another for the reception. They have the advantage of being faster (Full-
duplex) since you can transmit and receive at the same time, but require more wires to wire,
which is a disadvantage.

2.3. The Processor

The processor, also called a microprocessor or CPU, is the brain of the computer, because
it executes the instructions of the programs through a set of instructions. The processor is
characterized by its frequency, that is, the rate at which it executes instructions, so roughly, a
processor clocked at 500Mhz performs 500 million operations per second. The operation of
executing an instruction can be as follows: at each Clock Top (for simple instructions) the
processor:

o Reads the statement to be executed in memory;

o Performs the statement;
o Moves to the next statement.

The processor is actually made up of a control unit that reads the instructions and decodes
them. And a processing unit (UAL) that executes the instructions.

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Instructions (operations to be performed or performed by the processor) are stored in the
main memory. A statement is composed of two fields:

 The operation code: this is the action that the process must perform.

 The operand code: represents the parameters of the statement. It depends on

the operation (this can be a data, or an address of a memory location).

The motherboard has a slot (sometimes several in the case of multiprocessor

motherboards) to accommodate the processor. There are two categories of media:

 The slot: this is a rectangular connector in which the processor is plugned

vertically.

 The Socket: this is a square connector with a large number of small connectors
on which the processor comes to attach.

Since the processor during its operation heats up (thermal radiation), it is necessary to anticipate
the heat to prevent the circuits from melting. This is the reason why it is usually topped with a
heat sink, a material with good thermal conduction usually accompanied by a fan to improve
air circulation around it and improve heat exchange. The main elements of the microprocessor
are:

♣ A clock: between two clock tops the processor performs an action. An instruction
requires one or more processor actions. The unit of the number of instructions
processed per unit of time is the MIPS (million instructions per second);
♣ Bus management unit: which manages the flow of information in and out of it;
♣ Instruction unit: which reads the incoming data, decodes it and then sends it to the
execution unit;
♣ Unit of execution: which performs the tasks that it gives to the unit of instruction.

Storage battery Register of @

Address Bus

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Register
Of states

Clock

Figure 3 CPU Elements

Several architectures have been proposed for the implementation of CPUs, including:

 CISC architecture(Complex Instruction Set Computer): is used by all type 86

processors, i.e. processors manufactured by Intel, AMD, Cyrix. Processors based on
the CISC architecture can process complex instructions that are directly based on
electronic circuits, i.e. some instructions that are difficult to create from the basic
instructions are printed directly on the chip in order to gain speed of execution;
 REDUCED Instruction Set Computer (RISC) architecture: Unlike cisc, it does not have
additional wired functions. This requires programs with simple instructions that can
be interpreted by the processor. This implies more difficult programming and a
more powerful compiler.
2.4. RAM or RAM
It is the main memory of the system, that is to say, it is a space to temporarily store data
during the execution of the program. It only allows you to store data as long as it is electrically
powered. So every time the computer shuts down all the data present in memory is erased.

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The hardware layout (layout) allows to have several types of RAM (types of bars); there
are many types of RAM these all come in the form of memory strips that can be attached to the
motherboard.

The first memoirs were in the form of DIP(Dup Inline Package). From now on the memories
are in the form of a bar in the format:

SIMM ((Single Inline Memory Module)

These are printed circuit boards, one side of which has memory chips. There are two types
of SIMM strips depending on the number of connectors.

 30-connector SIMM strips with dimensions of 89*13mm are 08-bit memories;

 The 72-connector 108*25mm SIMM arrays are memories capable of handling
32bits simultaneously. On the latter the processor works with a data bus with a
length of 64bites.

DIMM (Dual Inline Memory Module)

These shave 64-bit memories, which is why there is no need to pair them. The DIMMs
have memory chips on either side of the PCB and also 84 connectors on each side giving a
total of 168 pins. In addition to their larger dimensions of simm bars(130 x 25mm)these bars
have a second detrompor to avoid confusion.

There are several types of RAM on the market including: DRAM, DRAM FPM, DRAM
EDO, SDRAM, DDR-SDRAM, DR-SDRAM.

2.5. Other briefs

 Cache: Allows the processor to remember operations that have already been
performed before. Indeed it stores the operations performed by the processor so
that it does not waste time recalculating the things it has already done previously.
The cache size is usually 512KB; on recent computers, this type of memory is
directly integrated into the processor.
 Registers: when the processor processes the data (executes the instructions)
temporarily stores the data in the small memories of 8, 16 or 32KB which have the
advantage of being very fast called register. Depending on the type of processor,

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the number of registers can vary between ten and several hundred. The most
important registers are:
 The accumulator register: allows to store the results of arithmetic and
logical operations;
 The status register: allows you to store the indicators;
 The instruction register: contains the instruction in the processing.
 The ordinal counter: contains the address of the next instruction to be
processed;
 The buffer register: allows you to temporarily store data from memory.
 ROM memory: There is a type of memory to store information in the absence of
electric current. This is non-volatile memory. This type of memory makes it possible
to keep the data necessary for the computer to start. It contains data needed for
startup such as:
 The BIOS: which is the program to control the main input and output
interfaces of the system. It is also called BIOS ROM.
 Bootloader: a program to load the operating system into memory and
launch it.
 The setup: this is the screen available when the computer is turned on
to modify system settings.
 The Power On Self Test (POST): it is a program that runs automatically
when the system is booted to do a system test.

ROMs have gradually evolved fromfrozen read-only memory to programmable and then
reprogrammable memories. A distinction is made between:

☻ Prom (Programmable ROM): are chips made up of thousands of fuses that can
be blown through a device called a ROM Programmer sending a high voltage of
12V into some fuses. Thus the blown fuses correspond to 0s and the others to
1s;
☻ EPROM(Erasable PROM): are PROMs that can be erased by ultraviolet rays;

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☻ EEPROM(Electrically EPROM): are also erasable PROMs but can also be erased
by a simple electric current. Also callede Flash Memory or Flash ROM. The action
of reprogramming an EEPROM is called "flashing".

2.6. The Hard Drive

It is the organ of the PC to store information or data permanently, unlikeRAM. Hencethe
name mass memory. There are generally two types depending on the connection points or
connection interfaces: IDE, SATA.

The characteristics of the hard drive are:

o The transfer rate: it is the amount of data that can be read or written to the disk in a
given time, is expressed today in Megabytes per second;
o Latency or rational delay: represents the time elapsed between when the disk finds
the track and when it finds the data;
o Access time: this is the time it takes for the read head to go from one track to the next;
o Average access time: this is the time it takes for the disk to be between when it has
been ordered to provide the data and when it actually provides;
o Radial density: this is the number of tracks per inch measured in TPI (Track Per Inch);
o Linear density: this is the number of bit per for on a given track measured in BPI (Bit
Per Inch);
o Surface density: this is the ratio of linear density to radial density.
2.7. Input/Output Devices
 Input devices: Touch screen, micro, keyboard, mouse, scanner...
 Output devices: Speaker, printer, monitor...

There are several types of monitors: Tube Cathodic (CRT) and Flat Screen (Liquid
Cristal Display-LCD).

A monitor can be characterized by:

 Its definition: it is the number of points (pixels) that the screen can display. This
number of points is usually between 640*480 and 1600*1200.
 Its size: it is calculated by measuring the diagonal of the screen, is expressed in
thumb(1''= 2.54cm);

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 Its mask step: it is the distance that separates two photophores; the smaller it is, the
more accurate the image is;
 Its resolution: it determines the number of pixels per unit area, expressed in DPI (Dote
Per Inch);
 Its scan rate: it represents the number of frames that are displayed per second. It is
expressed in Hertz.
 Other peripherals: ports (serial, parallel, USB, HDMI, CSI S interfaces,RJ45, phone
port), cards (networks, graphics...).

A computer without any software is unable to function. This is the software part that gives
the hardware its whole life and intelligence. Software is an information processing program (set
of instructions) containing the procedures and data necessary for an application. There are two
types:

Basic software or system software or operating software: allows the operation of the
computer as the operating system (OS) which allows to exploit the different resources of a
machine (WindowsXP, 2000, vista, 7,8,10 ..., UBUNTU, MacOs and many others)

Application software: allows you to perform a precise task such as spreadsheet (Excel),
texter (Word), text editor (Notepad++) ...

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