Components of a computer

Question 1

What is a HDD?

Answer 1

Hard disk drive are stored files permanently on a magnetic disk that spins around.

Question 2

What is a SSD?

Answer 2

Solid state drive are stored files permanently on a chip that does not move.

Question 3

What is RAM?

Answer 3

Random access memory where it stores all applications at that time but data is lost once power is lost.

Question 4

What is ROM?

Answer 4

Read only memory, with stored programs to start the computer and does not lose data once power is lost.

Question 5

What is the graphics card?

Answer 5

Produces the images we see on the monitor.

Question 6

What is the BIOS?

Answer 6

Basic input/output system which boots up the computer even when there is no operating system.

Question 7

What’s the motherboard/main board?

Answer 7

The main circuit board.

Question 8

What’s the CPU?

Answer 8

Central powering unit that is the ‘brains of the computer’

Question 9

What’s the heat sink?

Answer 9

Keeps the cpu cool by absorbing the heat.

Question 10

What’s the NIC?

Answer 10

Network interface cable which connects us to the internet with the ethernet cable.

Question 11

What’s the power supply?

Answer 11

Gives the computer electricity needed to switch on.

Question 12

What’s the expansion slots?

Answer 12

Allows us to add on more RAM/graphics cards etc.

Question 13

What does the CPU do?

Answer 13

The cpu fetches, decodes and executes instructions over and over again billions of times in a cycle.

Question 14

What is an embedded system?

Answer 14

Computers that are designed for a specific job to do a certain thing.

Question 15

What are the CPUs main parts?

Answer 15

The control unit (cu), arithmetic logic unit (ALU) and the cache.

Question 16

What’s the CU?

Answer 16

It overall controls the cpu, it’s main job is to execute program instructions and to control the flow of data that goes inside and outside of the CPU

Question 17

What’s the ALU?

Answer 17

Arithmetic logic unit does all the calculations. It completes simple addition, subtraction, comparing numbers and multiplication and division. It contains the accumulator register.

Question 18

What’s the cache?

Answer 18

It is very fast memory in the cpu, slower than the registers but faster than RAM. Stores regularly used data so cpu can access quickly. They have low capacity and expensive. There is different levels of cache memory (L1,L2,L3). L1 is the fastest but lowest capacity and L3 is slowest but biggest capacity.

Question 19

Registers

Answer 19

Small price of memory that temporarily holds tiny bits of data that is currently being worked on needed by the CPU.

Question 20

PC

Answer 20

Holds the memory address of instruction for each cycle.

Question 21

Accumulator

Answer 21

Stores intermediate results of calculations in the ALU.

Question 22

What is MAR?

Answer 22

Memory address register that holds any memory address about to be used by the CPU. Stores the address where the data is to be fetched or stored.

Question 23

What is MDR?

Answer 23

Memory data register which holds the actual data or instructions. This may have been fetched from memory or be waiting to be written to memory.

Question 24

Volatile or non-volatile

Answer 24

Volatile memory is temporary, once lost power the data is gone.e.g RAM
Non-volatile is permanent memory it keeps its data even without power.e.g ROM.

Question 25

Virtual memory

Answer 25

A secondary storage used as extra RAM once the RAM is full and data must be placed elsewhere. Virtual memory may be needed when there are too many applications open at once or if a particularly memory intensive application is being used. Secondary storage is much slower So it can make computers slow to respond. Held in HDD.

Question 26

What does CPU performance depend on?

Answer 26

Clock speed, Cores and Cache.

Question 27

What is clock speed?

Answer 27

The number of instructions a single processor core can carry out per second (Hz). The higher the clock speed the greater the the computer is. Some computers that can be overlooked may cause CPUs to overheat, crash or permanent damage. The quicker the ticks are the more instructions are being carried out.

Question 28

Cores

Answer 28

Each core can process data independently. The more cores it has the more instructions it can carry out at once so it can be quicker.

Question 29

Cache size

Answer 29

The cache is data storage inside the CPU that’s much faster than RAM. It contains frequently used instructions so the more cache there is the quicker the performance of the CPU is as it fetches, decides and executes information quicker.

Question 30

What is the GPU?

Answer 30

Graphics processing units are specialised circuits for handling graphics and image processing. For better graphics performance a dedicated graphics card is often used.

Question 31

Storage

Answer 31

There are two types of storage: primary and secondary storage. Primary storage refers to memory that the CPU can access quickly and has the fastest read/write speeds and is mainly volatile, whereas the secondary storage is non-volatile and where the data is stored when not in use such as optical, magnetic and flash storage. The read/write speeds are much slower compared to primary storage.

Question 32

Magnetic storage

Answer 32

these storages uses magnetic materials such as magnetic tape or magnetic metal disks. They are relatively cheap per unit of storage, fast access and retrieval times. However they can be easily damaged and will slow down and eventually break over time. It has slower access than SSD and it is not portable.

Question 33

Optical storage

Answer 33

examples of optical storage are CD and DVDs. They can hold a lot more data than a standard DVD meaning it can store movies with better graphics quality, they are also portable and robust however they are more expensive, requires a blu-ray player which can lose data when scratched and is reliant on an optical drive.

Question 34

Flash storage

Answer 34

Examples of flash storage: USB flash drives, SD cards,mobile phones, digital cameras. Flash storage is a solid state that is non-volatile and BIOS is a flash storage but it is a primary storage. Advantages of flash is that they are robust and portable with plenty of storage capacity and have a quick read/write however they are easy to lose and more expensive.