Electronic/electrical circuits that a computer is assembled from. The platform on which software executes.
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Main Memory
Memory that is directly adressable by the processor.
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Memory location
A seperately addressable area of main memory.
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RAM:
Random access memory; volatile main memory in which the locations can be accessed directly in any order with the same access time for all writing and reading operations.
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ROM
Read-only memory; non-volatile main memory that cannot be written to once it is set up.
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EEPROM:
Electrically erasable programmable read-only memory; it contents may be altered but writing is about 100 times slower than reading.
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Computer Bus:
A set of parallell wire connecting independent components of a computer system.
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System bus or external bus
The main highway connecting the processor, main memory and I/O controllers; it is made up of a data bus, an address bus and a control bus.
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I/O
Allows the CPU to communicate with peripherals.
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Peripheral
A computer device that is not part of the CPU. It can external (e.g. mouse, keyboard, printer, monitor, memory stick or scanner) or internal, such as a CD-ROM drive.
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I/O device
A hardware unit that sends or recieves data or stores data by communicating with the processor and main memory through an I/O controller.
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Secondary storage;
Permanent storage memory not directly connected to the processor; also called backing store.
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Main memory address
A unique numeric code corresponding to a location in memory
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Stored program concept
A program must be resident in the main memory to be executed; it is processed by fetching machine code instructions in sequence from main memory and executing them one at a time, in th processor.
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Register:
A very fast memory location inside the processor or I/O controller.
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General-purpose register:
A register not assigned a specific role by the processor designer. Programmer may use general-purpose registers.
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Dedicated register
A register assigned a specific role by the processor designer. Programmers may use some but not all dedicated registers.
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Clock speed
The clock speed of the processor is the frequency in megahertz or gigahertz at which the processor executes instructions.
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Word Length
The number of digits in a binary word.
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Bus width
The number of signal wires or lines allocated to the bus.
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