What is a computer?
The
term computer is used to describe a device made up of electronic and
electro
mechanical components. The computer itself cannot perform any task
and is
referred to as hardware.
Any
computer system consists of two elements :
1)Hardware
2)software
Software : Software is used to describe the instructions that tells
the computer
how to
perform a task. Software is categorized into 2 types
1)
System softwares ( eg . operating systems, compilers, editors etc)
2)
Application softwares ( MS-word, excel, accounting packages etc)
Hardware : The
physical components which you can see, touch and feel in
the
computer system are called hardware Eg monitor, keyboard, mouse,CPU etc
The computer systems are of different types
we can classify them as follows:
8-bit
example : 8085 microprocessor
16-bit
example : 8086, 286, 386 processor
32-bit
example : 486
64-bit
example : Pentium – II
The
internal parts like registers and ALU use data in 8-bits in a 8 bit processor
and so in a 16 bit and 32 bit processor the use 32 bit data.....the BUS which
carries data from one part of a processor to another has 8-lines in a 8 bit
processor,16 lines in a 16 bit and 32 lines in a 32 bit one.....because all
these bits have to be transmitted simultaneously. The variation in these bits
results in the variation of its speed size and capability.