Unit 2A: Hardware, The CPU & Storage Flashcards
Circuit
closed pathway which conducts electricity
Vacuum Tubes
use circuits to facilitate flow of electrons (replaced by transistor)
Transistor
switch that can be flipped millions of times per second, part of integrated circuit
Integrated Circuit
all parts of circuit on silicon chip
Microchip
stores and processes data
Microprocessor
miniaturized circuitry of CPU
System Unit
case that contains computer’s components
Binary System
computer language 0s and 1s
Measuring Capacity
Bit
Byte
Kilobyte
Megabyte
Gigabyte
Terabyte
Petabyte
Exabyte
ASCII
7-8 bits per character, 256 characters
Unicode
16 bits per character
EBCDIC
8 bits per character
Bay
opening used for installation of electrical equipment
Power Supply
converts AC to DC to run computer
Surge Protector
protects computer from power spikes
UPS
Uninterruptible Power Supply
Motherboard
main system board
Chipset
interconnected chips on motherboard
Multicore Processor
more cores means more speed
2 Parts of CPU
1) Control Unit
2) Arithmetic/Logic Unit (ALU)
2 Types of Memory
Primary - main memory, RAM, volatile
Secondary - flashdrives, etc.. non volatile
RAM
Random Access Memory, volatile, holds software instructions
ROM
Read-Only Memory - non-volatile, fixed instructions on how to load operating system