Section 4 Hardware and Software Flashcards
what is hardware ?
a germ used to describe electrical or electro mechanical parts of a computer and its input , output and storage devices
what is software ?
all of the programs taht are written to make a computer function
what is system software ?
software needed to run the computers hardware and application programs.
this includes the operating system , utlity programs, libaries and programming langyuage translators
what is an operting system?
an operating system is a set of programs that lies between application software and the computernhardware. PROVIDES A USER INTERFACE
what are utility programs ?
utility software is system software designed to potmise the performance of the computer or perform tasks such as backing up files , restoring corrupted files from back up
what is disk defragmentation?
a program that will reorgranise a hard disk so that files which have been split up into blocks and stored all over the disk will be recombined in a single series of sequential blocks
what is a libary program ?
ready compiled programs which can be run when needed
what are the 3 translators ?
compiler
interpreter
assembler
what is application software ?
programs that perform specific user oriented tasks
what is general prupose software ?
softaware that can be used for many different purposes e.g. word , spreadsheets
what is special purpose software ?
software that perfroms a single specific task or set of tasks e.g. hotel booking systems
what are the functions of an operating system ?
memory management
processor scheduling
backing store management
input / output management
what is memory managment ?
this is the process of the cpu deciding how much of the rams storage an instruction / task will require to perform it efficiently
what is processor scheduling?
this is when the schedueler alocates when each instruction needs to be executed by the cpu`
what is multi tasking ?
this is when the cpu is able to performmore than 1 instruction at a time
the more cores a cpu has the instructions it is able to do at the same time