CSC 100 FUNDAMENTALS OF COMPUTING

COMPUTER BASICS

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid: humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.
Albert Einstein

What is a Computer?
a computer is a device that receives, stores, and processes information

What makes a computer powerful?

SPEED A computer can do billions of actions per second.

 RELIABILITY Failures are usually due to human error, one way or another.

 STORAGE A computer can keep huge amounts of data.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF COMPUTER

supercomputers: powerful but expensive; used for complex computations (e.g., weather forecasting, engineering design and modeling)

TIANHE 1-A

 desktop computers: less powerful but affordable; used for a variety of user applications (e.g., email, Web browsing, document processing)

 laptop computers: similar functionality to desktops, but mobile

Netbook 9-11" screen Compressed keyboard

PALMTOP, SMART PHONE, TABLET PC - portable, but limited applications and screen size

SMART PHONE

TABLET PC

Desktop Specifications
purchasing a computer can be confusing sales materials contain highly technical information and computer jargon the following specs describe two computer systems for sale in January, 2007 Desktop 1 is a low-end system, inexpensive but with limited features Desktop 2 is a high-end system, more expensive

Hardware vs. Software

the term hardware refers to the physical components of a computer system e.g., monitor, keyboard, mouse, hard drive the term software refers to the programs that execute on the computer e.g., word processing program, Web browser

The easiest way to tell the difference between hardware and software is to kick it. If it hurts your toe, its hardware.

hardware components

Software components

Common Desktop Hardware

von Neumann Architecture

although specific components may vary, virtually all modern computers have the same underlying structure known as the von Neumann architecture named after computer pioneer, John von Neumann, who popularized the design in the early 1950's

 the von Neumann architecture identifies 3 essential components 1.Input/Output Devices (I/O) allow the user to interact with the computer 2.Memory stores information to be processed as well as programs (instructions specifying the steps necessary to complete specific tasks) 3.Central Processing Unit (CPU) carries out the instructions to process information

Central Processing Unit (CPU)

the CPU is the "brains" of the computer, responsible for controlling its inner workings made of circuitry electronic components wired together to control the flow of electrical signals the circuitry is embedded in a small silicon chip, 1-2 inches square despite its small size, the CPU is the most complex part of a computer (CPU circuitry can have 100's of millions of individual components)

 commercial examples:
Intel Core i7 AMD Phenom II X6

the CPU works by repeatedly fetching a program instruction from memory and executing that instruction individual instructions are very simple (e.g., add two numbers, or copy this data) complex behavior results from incredible speed a 2.53 GHz Celeron D processor can execute 2.53 billion instructions per second a 2.93 GHz Core 2 Duo processor can execute 2.93 billion instructions per second

Memory
memory is the part of the computer that stores data and programs modern computers are digital devices, meaning they store and process information as binary digits (bits) bits are commonly represented as either 0 or 1 bits are the building block of digital memory by grouping bits together, large ranges of values can be represented

 memory capacity is usually specified in bytes a byte is a collection of 8 bits so can represent a range of 28 = 256 values large collections of bytes can be specified using prefixes

since a byte is sufficient to represent a single character, can think of memory in terms of text a kilobyte can store a few paragraphs (roughly 1 thousand characters) a megabyte can store a book (roughly 1 million characters) a gigabyte can store a small library (roughly 1 billion characters) a terabyte can store a book repository (roughly 1 trillion characters)

modern computers use a combination of memory types, each with its own performance and cost characteristics main memory (or primary memory) is fast and expensive data is stored as electric signals in circuitry, used to store active data memory is volatile data is lost when the computer is turned off examples: Random Access Memory (RAM), cache

secondary memory is slower but cheaper use different technologies (magnetic signals on hard disk, reflective spots on CD) memory is permanent useful for storing long-term data examples: hard disk, floppy disk, compact disk (CD), flash drive

higher-end computers tend to have more main memory to allow for quick access to more data and programs more secondary memory to allow for storing more long-term data

Input/Output (I/O)
input devices allow the computer to receive data and instructions from external sources examples: keyboard, mouse, track pad, microphone, scanner

 output devices allow the computer to display or broadcast its results examples: monitor, speaker, printer

Software
recall: hardware refers to the physical components of computers software refers to the programs that execute on the hardware

a software program is a sequence of instructions for the computer (more specifically, for the CPU) to carry out in order to complete some task e.g., word processing (Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect) e.g., image processing (Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Flash) e.g., Web browsing (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox)

Operating Systems
the Operating System (OS) is a collection of programs that controls how the CPU, memory, and I/O devices work together it controls how data and instructions are loaded and executed by the CPU it organizes and manages files and directories it coordinates the CPU, memory, and I/O devices most modern OS's utilize a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to make interacting with the computer easy GUI's utilize windows, icons, menus, and pointers

Windows 7

MAC OSX

Ubuntu 11.04 (A linux distro)

Quick Net & Web Overview

the Internet is a vast, international network of computers the physical connections between computers vary, but the overall effect is that computers around the world can communicate and share resources the Internet traces its roots back to 1969, when the U.S. government sponsored the first long-distance computer network starting with only 4 computers, the network would eventually evolve into today's Internet

the World Wide Web is a collection of software that spans the Internet and enables the interlinking of documents and resources the basic idea for the Web was proposed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 his system interlinked documents (including multimedia elements such as images and sound clips) over the Internet through the use of well-defined rules, or protocols, that define how they are formatted, documents could be shared across networks on various types of computers

Internet World Wide Web

the Internet could exist without the Web and did, in fact, for many years (applications included email and news groups) the Web couldn't exist without the Internet the Internet is the hardware that stores and executes the Web software

Viewing a Web Page

a Web page is a text document that contains additional formatting information in a language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language)

a Web browser is a program that accesses a Web page, interprets its content, and displays the page

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Google Chrome

Firefox

Internet Explorer

Safari

Opera

Web Addresses
a Web server is an Internet-enabled computer that stores Web pages and executes software for providing access to the pages when you request a Web page, the browser sends a request over the Internet to the appropriate server the server locates the specified page and sends it back to your computer

Web pages require uniform names to locate and identify them uniquely each page is assigned a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) URL's are commonly referred to as Web addresses the different parts of the Web address provide information for locating the page

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