Chapter 1 – COMPUTER SYSTEM

Chapter 1
COMPUTER SYSTEM
TOPICS

 Introduction to Computer System

 Evolution of Computer
 Computer Memory
 Data Transfer Between Memory And CPU
 Microprocessors
 Data And Information
 Software
 Operating System
Introduction to Computer System
A computer is an electronic device that can be programmed to accept data (input), process it and
generate result (output). A computer along with additional hardware and software together is
called a computer system.

Components of a computer system

Figure 1.1 shows the block diagram of a computer system. The directed lines represent the flow of
data and signal between the components.

Secondary storage
devices

Primary Memory

Control unit ( CU)

Input device Output device

Arithmetic Logic Unit

( ALU )

Central Processing Unit (CPU)

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1] Input Devices

The devices through which control signals are sent to a computer are termed as input
devices.
 Input devices convert the input data into a digital form that is acceptable by the computer
system.
 Data entered through input device is temporarily stored in the main memory (also called
RAM). Instructions are stored permanently in additional storage locations called secondary
memory

2] Central Processing Unit (CPU)

It is the electronic circuitry of a computer that carries out the actual processing and usually
referred as the brain of the computer. It is commonly called processor.
 One or more microchips called integrated circuits (IC). The IC comprise semiconductor
materials.
 The CPU then fetches the program and data from the memory.
 It performs arithmetic and logic operations as per the given instructions and stores the
result back to memory.
 The CPU stores the data as well as instructions in its local memory called registers.

CPU has two main components — Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) and Control
Unit (CU).

 ALU performs all the arithmetic and logic operations that need to be done as per the
instruction in a program.
 Control Unit controls sequential instruction execution.
 CPU is also popularly known as microprocessor.
.
3] Output Devices
 The device that receives data from a computer system for display, physical production,
etc., is called output device. For example, monitor projector, headphone, speaker, printer,
etc.
 A printer is the most commonly used device to get output in physical (hardcopy) form.

Evolution of Computer

 Abacus

Computing is attributed to the invention of ABACUS almost 3000 years ago. It was a
mechanical device capable of doing simple arithmetic calculations only.

 Pascaline ( 1642)

Blaize Pascal invented a mechanical calculator known as Pascal calculator or Pascaline to

do addition and subtraction of two numbers directly and multiplication and division through
repeated addition and subtraction.

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 Analytic Engine (1834)

Charles Babbage invented analytical engine, a mechanical computing device for inputting,
processing, storing and displaying the output, which is considered to form the basis of modern
computers.

Central Processing unit

Input Out put

Memory

Fig 1.5 : Von Neumann architecture for the computer

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 Tabulating Machine ( 1890 )

Herman Hollerith designed a tabulating machine for summarising the data stored
on the punched card. It is considered to be first step towards programming.

 Turing Machine (1937 )

The Turing machine concept was a general purpose programmable machine that was
capable of solving any problem by executing the program stored on the punched cards.

 EDVAC/ENIAC ( 1945 )

John Von Neumann introduced the concept of stored program computer which was
capable of storing data as well as program in the memory. The EDVAC and then the ENIAC
computers were developed based on this concept.

 Transistor ( 1947 )

Vacuum tubes were replaced by transistors developed at Bell Labs, using semiconductor
materials.

 Integrated Circuit ( 1970 )

An Integrated Circuit (IC) is a silicon chip which contains entire electronic circuit on a
very small area. The size of computer drastically reduced because of ICs.

It consists of a Central Processing Unit (CPU) for processing arithmetic and logical
instructions, a memory to store data and programs, input and output devices and communication
channels to send or receive the output data.

Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) is the first binary programmable
computer based on Von Neumann architecture.

During the 1970s, Large Scale Integration (LSI) ofelectronic circuits allowed integration
of complete CPU on a single chip, called microprocessor.

 Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI). Advancement in technology has made it feasible
to fabricate high density of transistors and other components on a single IC called Super
Large Scale Integration (SLSI).

 IBM introduced its first personal computer (PC) for the home user in 1981 and Apple
introduced Macintosh machines in 1984. Graphical User Interface (GUI) based
operating systems by Microsoft and only command line interface like UNIX or DOS.

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Computer Memory

A computer system needs memory to store the data and instructions for processing.
Whenever we talk about the ‘memory’ of a computer system, we usually talk about the main or
primary memory. The secondary memory (also called storage device) is used to store data,
instructions and results permanently for future use.

Units of Memory

A computer system uses binary numbers to store and process data. The binary digits 0 and
1, which are the basic units of memory, are called bits.
A 4-bit word is called a Nibble. Examples of nibble are 1001, 1010, 0010, etc. A two nibble word,
i.e., 8-bit word is called a byte, for example, 01000110, 01111100, 10000001, etc.

Measurement units for digital data

Unit Description Unit Description

KB (Kilobyte) 1 KB = 1024 Bytes PB (Petabyte) 1 PB = 1024 TB
MB (Megabyte) 1 MB = 1024 KB EB (Exabyte) 1 EB = 1024 PB
GB (Gigabyte) 1 GB = 1024 MB ZB (Zettabyte) 1 ZB = 1024 EB
TB (Terabyte) 1 TB = 1024 GB YB (Yottabyte) 1 YB = 1024 ZB

1.3.2 Types of Memory

Computers have two types of memory — primary and secondary.

Primary Memory

 Primary memory is an essential component of a computer system. Program and data are
loaded into the primary memory before processing.
 The CPU interacts directly with the primary memory to perform read or write operation. It
is of two types viz. i. Random Access Memory (RAM) and ii. Read Only Memory
(ROM).

RAM (Random Access Memory)

 RAM is volatile, i.e., when the power is switched off ; the data in this memory is lost.
 It is used to store data temporarily while the computer is working.
 RAM is usually referred to as main memory and it is faster than the secondary memory or
storage devices.

ROM (Read Only Memory)

 ROM is non-volatile,which means its contents are not lost even when the power is turned
off.
 It is used as a small but faster permanent storage for the contents which are rarely changed.
 It used for permanent storage of information.

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Chache Memory

 RAM is faster than secondary storage, but not as fast as a computer processor.
 To speed up the operation of the CPU , a very high speed memory is placed between the
CPU and the primary memory known as cache
 It stores the copies of the data from frequently accessed primary memory locations, thus,
reducing the average time required to access data from primary memory.

Secondary Memory

 Secondary memory is also known as auxiliary memory.

 Primary memory has limited storage capacity and is either volatile (RAM) or read-only
(ROM).
 Computer system needs auxiliary or secondary memory to permanently store the data or
instructions for future use.
 The secondary memory is non-volatile and has larger storage capacity than primary
memory.
 It is slower and cheaper than the main memory and it cannot be accessed directly by the
CPU.
 Examples of secondary memory devices include Hard Disk Drive (HDD), CD/ DVD,
Memory Card, etc.,
 SSD which support very fast data transfer speed as compared to earlier HDDs.

Data Transfer between Memory and CPU

 Data need to be transferred between the CPU and primary memory as well as between the
primary and secondary memory
 Data are transferred between different components of a computer system using physical
wires called bus.
 Bus is used for data transfer between a USB port and hard disk or between a hard disk and
main memory
 Address bus to transfer addresses between CPU and main memory. The address of the
memory location that the CPU wants to read or write from is specified in the address bus.
 Control bus to communicate control signals between different components of a computer.

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CPU Memory Input and out

put

Control bus

Address bus

System busbus
Data

Figure 1.8 : data transfer between components through system bus

As the CPU may require to read data from main memory or write data to main memory, a
data bus is bidirectional. But the control bus and address bus are unidirectional.
 The CPU specifies the address, and the data is placed on the data bus by a dedicated
hardware, called memory controller.
Microprocessors

 A processor (CPU) which is implemented on a single microchip is called microprocessor.

 Microprocessor is a small-sized electronic component inside a computer that carries out
various tasks involved in data processing as well as arithmetic and logical operations
 A microprocessor is built over an integrated circuit comprising millions of small
components like resistors, transistors and diodes.
 Decreasing physical size and reduced cost.
 Microprocessors are capable of processing millions of instructions per millisecond.

Generations of Microprocessor

Generation Era Chip Word Maximum Clock speed cores Example

type size memory
size
First 1971- 73 LSI 4 / 8 bit 1 KB 108KHz200KHz Single Intel 8080
Second 1974 - 78 LSI 8 bit 1MB Up to 2MHz Single Motoral
6800
Intel 8085
Third 1979-80 VLSI 16 bit 16 MB 4 MHz – 6 Single Intel 8086
MHz
Fourth 1981-95 VLSI 32 bi 4 GB Up to 133 MHz Single Intel
80386
Motorola
68030
Fifth 1995 till SLSI 64 bit 64 GB 533 MHz - 34 Multicore Pentium,
date GHz Celeron,
Xeon

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Microprocessor Specifications

Microprocessors are classified on the basis of different features which include chip type, word
size, memory size, clock speed, etc.

Word Size

Word size is the maximum number of bits that a microprocessor can process at a time.
Earlier, a word was of 8 bits, as it was the maximum limit at that time. At present, the minimum
word size is 16 bits and maximum word size is 64 bits.

Memory Size

Depending upon the word size, the size of RAM varies. Initially, RAM was very small
(4MB) due to 4/8 bits word size. As word size increased to 64 bits, it has become feasible to use
RAM of size upto 16 Exabytes (EB).

Clock Speed

 Computers have an internal clock that generates pulses (signals) at regular intervals of
time. Clock speed simply means the number of pulses generated per second by the clock
inside a computer.
 The clock speed indicates the speed at which the computer can execute instructions. It was
measured in Hertz (Hz) and Kilohertz (kHz). it is now measured in Gigahertz (GHz), i.e.,
billions of pulses per second.

Cores

 Core is a basic computation unit of the CPU. the computer to execute multiple tasks,
thereby increasing the system’s performance.
 CPU with two, four, and eight cores is called dual-core, quad-core and octa-core
processor, respectively.

Microcontrollers

 The microcontroller is a small computing device which has a CPU, a fixed amount of
RAM, ROM and other peripherals all embedded on a single chip as compared to
microprocessor that has only a CPU on the chip.
 Keyboard, mouse, washing machine, digital camera, pen drive, remote controller, and
microwave are few examples of microcontrollers.
 The microcontroller in a fully automatic washing machine is used to control the washing
cycle without any human intervention.

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Data and Information

 A computer system considers everything as data, be it instructions, pictures, songs, videos,

documents, etc.
 Data can also be raw and unorganised facts that are processed to get meaningful
information.

Data and Its Types

Data can be input to a computer in the text form consisting of English alphabets A–Z, a–z,
numerals 0 – 9, and special symbols like @, #, etc.

Structured Data

 Data which follows a strict record structure and is easy to comprehend is called structured
data.
 Structured data may be sorted in ascending or descending order.

Table 1.3 Structured data: Monthly attendance records of students

Roll No Name Month Attendance

R1 Mohan May 95

R2 Sohan May 75

R3 Sheen May 92

R4 Geetha July 94

R5 Anitha July 85

Unstructured Data

 Data which are not organised in a pre-defined record format is called unstructured data.
 Examples include audio and video files, graphics, text documents, social media posts,
satellite images, etc.

Semi-structured Data

 Data which have no well-defined structure but maintains internal tags or markings to
separate data elements are called semi-structured data.

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Name: Mohan Class: XI Month: July Attendance: 98

Name: Sohan Class: XI Month: July Attendance: 65
Name: Sheen Class: XI Month: July Attendance: 85
Name: Geeta Class: XI Month: May Attendance: 82
Name: Geeta Class: XI Month: July Attendance: 94

Figure 1.11: Semi-structured data: Month-wise total attendance record maintained by the school.

Data Capturing, Storage and Retrieval

Data Capturing

It involves the process of gathering data from different sources in the digital form. This capturing
may vary from simple instruments like keyboard, barcode readers used at shopping outlets,
comments or posts over social media, remote sensors on an earth orbiting satellite, etc.

Data Storage

It is the process of storing the captured data for processing later. Now-a-days data is being
produced at a very high rate, and therefore data storage has become a challenging task.

Data Retrieval

 It involves fetching data from the storage devices, for its processing as per the user
requirement.
 Minimising data access time is crucial for faster data processing.

Data Deletion and Recovery

 The storage devices can malfunction or crash down resulting in the deletion of data stored.
 Data recovery is a process of retrieving deleted, corrupted and lost data from secondary
storage devices.
 There are usually two security concerns associated with data. One is its deletion by some
unauthorised person or software.
 The other concern is related to unwanted recovery of data by unauthorised user or
software. Many a times, we discard our old, broken or malfunctioning storage devices
without taking care to delete data.

SOFTWARE

Hardware: It consist of the physical components of a computer.

Software: A set of instruction that tells the computer to perform an intended task.
 Hardware needs to be operated by a set of instructions.
 These sets of instructions are referred to as software.
 The software comprises a set of instructions which on execution deliver the desired
outcome.

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 Some examples of software include operating systems like Ubuntu or Windows 7/10, word
processing tool like LibreOffice or Microsoft Word, video player like VLC Player, photo
editors like GIMP and LibreOffice draw.
 –A document or image stored on the hard disk or pen drive is referred to as a soft-copy.
Once printed, the document or an image is called a hard-copy.

Need of Software

 A software knows how to make different hardware components of a computer work and
communicate with each other as well as with the end-user.
 Software acts as an interface between human users and the hardware.
 Software can be broadly classified into three categories viz.
 System software,
 Programming tools
 Application software.

System Software

 The software that provides the basic functionality to operate a computer by interacting
directly with its constituent hardware is termed as system software.
 Examples of system software include operating systems, system utilities, device drivers,
etc.

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Operating System

 Operating system is a system software that operates the computer. An operating system is
the most basic system software, without which other software cannot work.
 Operating systems are Windows, Linux, Macintosh, Ubuntu, Fedora, Android, iOS, etc.

System Utilities

 Software used for maintenance and configuration of the computer system is called system
utility.
 System utilities are shipped with the operating system for example disk defragmentation
tool, formatting utility, system restore utility. Another set of utilities are those which are
not shipped with the operating system but are required to improve the performance of the
system.
 Ex: anti-virus software, disk cleaner tool, disk compression software, etc.

Device Drivers

 Device driver is to ensure proper functioning of a particular device.

 The device driver acts as an interface between the device and the operating system. It
provides required services by hiding the details of operations performed at the hardware
level of the device.

Programming Tools

 Humans are able to write programs in high-level language, computers understand machine
language.
 There is a continuous need for conversion from highevel to machine level language, for
which translators are needed.

Classification of Programming Languages

 It is very difficult for a human being to write instructions in the form of 1s and 0s.
 Two major categories of computer programming languages are
o low-level languages
 Machine level languages
 Assembly level languages
o high-level languages
 General Purpose languages ( Ex : BASIC , PASCAL
 Specific purpose languages

LOW LEVEL LANGUAGES

 Low-level languages are machine dependent languages and include machine language and
assembly language.
 Machine language uses 1s and 0s to write instructions which are directly understood and
executed by the computer.

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 But writing a code in machine language is difficult as one has to remember all operation
codes and machine addresses.
 Also finding errors in the code written in machine language is difficult.
 Assembly language was developed that allowed usage of English-like words and symbols
instead of 1s and 0s.
 But one major drawback of writing a code in this language is that the code is computer
specific, i.e., the code written for one type of CPU cannot be used for another type of
CPU.

HIGH LEVEL LANGUAGES

 High level languages are machine independent and are simpler to write code into.
Instructions are using English like sentences and each high level language follows a set of
rules, similar to natural languages.
 However, these languages are not directly understood by the computer. Hence, translators
are needed to translate high-level language codes into machine language. Examples of
high level language include C++, Java, Python, etc.

NOTE : The translator program that convert an high level code into machine code is called an
compiler

Language Translators

 Computer can understand only machine language.

 A translator is needed to convert program written in assembly or high level language to
machine language.
 The program code written in assembly or high-level language is called source code.
 The source code is converted by a translator into the machine understandable form called
object (machine) code.
 The three types of translators used in computing systems are assembler, compiler and
interpreter.
 The translator used to convert the code write in assembly language to machine language is
called assembler.
 Each assembler can understand a specific microprocessor instruction set only and hence,
the machine code is not portable.
 Compiler converts the source code into machine code.
 An interpreter reads once a statement of a high –level language program at a time and
translates it into machine level language and executes it immediately.
 An interpreter translates one line at a time instead of the whole program at one go.
Interpreter takes one line, converts it into executable code if the line is syntactically
correct, and then it repeats these steps for all lines in the source code.

Program Development Tools

 An editor is a software that allows us to create a text file where we type instructions and
store the file as the source code.
 In order to simplify the program development, there are software called Integrated
Development Environment (IDE) consisting of text editor, building tools and debugger.

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Application Software

Software that works on top of the system software is termed as application software.

There are again two broad categories of application software

 general purpose software

 customised application software

General Purpose Software

Application software developed for generic applications, to cater to a bigger audience in

general are called general purpose software.
For example, spreadsheet tool Calc of LibreOffice can be used by any computer user to do
calculation or to create account sheet. Adobe Photoshop,GIMP, Mozilla web browser, etc.,

Customised Software

Software custom or tailor-made application software, that are developed to meet the
requirements of a specific organisation or an individual.

User-defined software include websites, school management software, accounting

software, etc.

NOTE : A computer system can work without application software, but it cannot work without
system software.

Proprietary or Free and Open Source Software

 Developers of some application software provide their source code as well as the software
freely to the public, with an aim to develop and improve further with each other’s help.
Such software is known as Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).
 For example, the source code of operating system Ubuntu .
 More examples of FOSS include Python, Libreoffice, Openoffice, Mozilla Firefox, etc.

Software are freely available for use but source code may not be available. Such software
are called freeware.
Examples of freeware are Skype, Adobe Reader, etc.

The software to be used has to be purchased from the vendor who has the copyright of the
software, then it is a proprietary software.
Examples of proprietary software include Microsoft Windows, Tally, Quick heal, etc.

A software can be freeware or open source or proprietary software depending upon the
terms and conditions of the person or group who has developed and released that software.

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Operating System

Types of user Interface of

Operating system

Command-based Graphical User Touch based Voice based Gesture –

Interface Interface Interface Interface based Interface

Types of user interface of OS

 An operating system (OS) can be considered to be a resource manager which manages all
the resources of a computer, i.e., its hardware including CPU, RAM, Disk, Network and
other input-output devices
 It also controls various application software and device drivers, manages system security
and handles access by different users.
 Examples of popular OS are Windows, Linux, Android, Macintosh and so on.
 The primary objectives of an operating system are two-fold. The first is to provide services
for building and running application programs.
 The second objective of an operating system is to provide an interface to the user through
which the user can interact with the computer.

OS User Interface

There are different types of user interfaces each of which provides a different
functionality. Some commonly used interfaces are shown in Figure .

Command-based Interface
 Command-based interface requires a user to enter the commands to perform different
tasks like creating, opening, editing or deleting a file, etc.
 The user has to remember the names of all such programs or specific commands which
the operating system supports.
 The primary input device used by the user for command based interface is the
keyboard.
 Examples of operating systems with command-based interface include MS-DOS and
Unix.

Graphical User Interface

 Graphical User Interface (GUI) lets users run programsor give instructions to the computer
in the form of icons, menus and other visual options.
 The input devices used to interact with the GUI commonly include the mouse and the
keyboard.
 Examples of operating systems with GUI interfacesinclude Microsoft Windows, Ubuntu,
Fedora and Macintosh, among others.

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Touch-based Interface

 Today Smartphone’s, tablets and PCs allow users to interact with the system simply using
the touch input.
 Using the touchscreen, a user provides inputs to the operating system, which are
interpreted by the OS as commands like opening an app, closing an app, dialling a number,
scrolling across apps, etc.
 Examples of popular operating systems with touchbased interfaces are Android and iOS.
Windows 8.1 and 10 also support touch-based interfaces on touch screen devices.

Voice-based Interface

 Modern computers have been designed to address the needs of all types of users including
people with special needs and people who want to interact with computers or smart phones
while doing some other task.
 Users who cannot use the input devices like the mouse, keyboard, and touch screens,
modern operating systems provide other means of human-computer interaction.
 Users today can use voice-based commands to make a computer work in the desired way.
Some operating systems which provide voice-based control to users include iOS (Siri),
Android (Google Now or “OK Google”), Microsoft Windows 10 (Cortana) and so on.

Gesture-based Interface

 Some smartphones based on Android and iOS as well as laptops let users interact with the
devices using gestures like waving, tilting, eye motion and shaking.
 This technology is evolving faster and it has promising potential for application in gaming,
medicine and other areas.

Functions of Operating System

The important services and tasks that an operating system provides for managing the computer
system.

Process Management

A program is intended to carry out various tasks. A task in execution is known as process Process
management concerns the management of multiple processes, allocation of required resources,
and exchange of information among processes.

Memory Management

 Primary or main memory of a computer system is usually limited.

 The main task of memory management is to give (allocate) and take (free) memory from
running processes.
 Since there are multiple processes running at a time, there arises a need to dynamically
(on-the-go) allocate and free memory to the processes.

o Allocate memory
o Free Memory
o Keep track of memory usage.

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o Memory management concerns with management of main memory so that maximum

memory is occupied or utilised by large number of processes while keeping track of each
and every location within the memory as free or occupied.

File Management

 Data and programs are stored as files in the secondary storage of a computer system. File
management involves the creation, updation, deletion and protection of these files in the
secondary memory.
 File management system manages secondary memory, while memory management system
handles the main memory of a computer system.

o Provide access to files

o Keep back-up of files
o Secure file

Device Management

Operating system manages these heterogeneous devices that are interdependent. The operating
system interacts with the device driver and the related software for a particular device.

o Open ,close and write device drivers.

o Communication ,control and monitor the device drivers

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