Information Systems Hardware Flashcards
What are flash drives (also known as jump drives or thumb drives)?
Small, portable devices that can store anywhere from 500 megabytes to several gigabytes. The term “drive” is a bit of a misnomer as there are no moving parts to the “drive”. Rather, the memory in a flash drive is similar to the RAM used as primary storage for your CPU.
What constitutes computer hardware?
This includes the physical equipment in your computer and the equipment that your computer uses to connect to other computers or computer networks.
What are magnetic disks?
These are random access devices. Data can be stored on, and retrieved from, the disk in any order. This is the most efficient way to store and retrieve individual records. Magnetic disks are the most commonly used form of secondary storage.
What is a “central processing unit (CPU)?
The CPU is the control center of the computer system. It has three principal components.
What is a “mainframe computer”?
Computers used by commercial organizations to support mission critical tasks such as sales and order processing, inventory management, and e-commerce applications. Unlike supercomputers, which tend to support processor-intenstive activities (i.e., a small number of highly complex calculations), mainframe computers tend to be input/output (I/O) intensive (i.e., a very large numbers of simple transactions). Mainframes frequently support thousands of users at a single point in time.
How is read-only memory (ROM) used?
Used to permanently store the data needed to power on the computer; includes the portions of the operating system.
Define “ supercomputers.” What are they used for?
Computers at the leading edge of processing capacity. Used for calculation-intensive scientific applications, for example, weather forecasting and climate research.
What is the purpose of secondary storage devices?
Provide permanent storage for programs and data. Depending on the way the devices are set up, they can either be online (the data on the device is available for immediate access by the CPU) or offline ( the device is stored in an area where the data is not accessible to the CPU).
What data is stored in random access memory (RAM)?
A temporary data store for information in process.
What is an optical disk?
These are laser technology to “burn” data on the disk (although some rewritable disks use magnetic technology to record data). In general, read-only and write-once optical disks are a more stable storage medium than magnetic disks. Optical disks, like magnetic disks are random access devices. There are several different types of optical disks.
