Personal Computer: How it Works - Term Paper Example

Name Course Tutor Date Personal Computer: How It Works. Introduction A personal computer (PC) refers to a microcomputer designed for use by a single person at a time. The need to understand how a PC works is an idea that requires a considerable amount of its technical background. Any personal computer needs one major component for it to function properly. The major component is a user. The user is involved in the input of information via devices such as keyboard and mouse, upon which the introduction of the data through such mediums. There is also what is known a processor which is considered as the brain of any computer. It calculates data and displays it to the monitor. The PC comprises of the following major components: hardware, software and the operating system which work in an integrated way (Campbell-Kelly & William, p.151). The hardware The most important elements of a personal computer’s hardware include memory and the Central Processing Unit (CPU) modules which are mounted onto the motherboard. Upon powering on the personal computer, the CPU establishes the communication with its motherboard, followed by the Basic Input Output System (BIOS) that is stored onto the chip within the motherboard. On completion with the verification of the required components to ensure that they are available and well functioning, it then searches for the operating system (OS). At times, it checks on the floppy drive, the hard disk, network the CD-ROM for the availability of the operating system. This process is commonly known as the booting process that involves the boot record researching, the boot record which is the configuration file that tells the personal computer about which files that need to be start up (Williams, p.50). The searching for the configuration files is continuous process on the floppy disk in A: drive and the C: or hard drive stores the configuration files for setting the operating system. Upon finding the configuration files which are read, the operating system for the machine is then set up (Microsoft, p.115). Several other commonly known examples personal computer hardware parts are; the modem, network interface card (NIC), video card and the sound card. These components work in integration with the peripheral components such as; the keyboard, printer, monitor and mouse. Operating system The operating system is in charge of everything that ranges from enabling the hardware components to the function components such as; the monitors, printers and modems. It also determines how to make communications with the available internet and playing such role of the traffic cop for the entire software. Operating software does the allocation of resources of the personal computer to both the software and hardware in an ordered manner. Such resources include; the storage space for the memory, hard disk accessibility and the outputs on the monitor. The absences of the operating system leads to software programs interference that may cause the personal computer to be malfunctioned or rather have continuous crash (Gupta &Hoo-min, p.67). The operating system provides the personal computer with a functioning infrastructure that entirely controls its hardware as well as software. Within the operating system, there is a manager called the Kernel that is responsible for the coordination of all the operations among the CPU, external devices, various applications and the memory. The Kernel synchronizes communication as well as the management of the memory usage. It also creates a process through the assigning of the memory and the other resources which establishes the priority process or the multi-tasking of systems does the program code loading into the memory and executes a program. The program is then interacted with the available user or rather other devices of the computer machine. The Software Software is an application which is installed onto the personal computer to enhance its usefulness. The software is the composite series of the instructions that inform the computer on what to accomplish. Such instructions are detailed enough to inform the computer on the every step that need to be performed. For instance; the word processing program comprises of the instructions on what to be done upon pressing any letter. The chipset The chipset controls the communication among the components found in the personal computer. It is split up to form two main chips with the first chip known as North Bridge handling the communication between Accelerated Graphic Port (AGP) bus, Random Access Memory, South Bridge within the chipset and the processor. The South Bridge is responsible for handling the entire input as well as output of a computer; this includes the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) and the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) buses. The memory, chipset, processor and the cache entirely work in union to function like a logical brain. The Northbridge level of the motherboard manages the high speed need for peripheral communications. It accomplishes its task by allowing communications with an integration of video that is enhanced by the Accelerated Graphical Port (AGP) and the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), an ideal example such communication is the processor to memory kind of communication. The Southbridge chipset provides the necessary support to the onboard peripherals and manages their respective communication with entire computer resources allocated to them (Gupta &Hoo-min, p.67). CMOS clock The electronic circuit known as the Complementary Metal-Oxyde Semiconductor (CMOS) which is sometimes referred to as BIOS CMOS saves the system information. The CMOS is constantly powered by the battery that is located within the motherboard. It allows several complimentary channels to successfully run a given single chip. The CMOS battery enables the loading of system settings into the computer memory during the booting process. The Basic Input /Output System (BIOS) chip, such memory chip has BIOS kind of software which informs the processor on how to interact with the entire computer hardware. Therefore, the CMOS keeps the configuration settings for the BIOS. The jumpers and DIP switches enable the configuration of the various hardware options within the motherboard (Gupta &Hoo-min, p.67). Information Within the Central Processing Unit, there is Arithmetic or Logic Unit that processes whatever is that is handed as well as sent out feedbacks by the control unit. The CPU is available for instruction follow-up that originate from various sources. A constant communication exists between a Central Processing Unit and the memory locations that store both the data as well as instructions (Roy, p. 112). After inputting the data, the initial step the personal computer has to get involved in the conversion of it to binary language that the computers are able to understand, these are series of 1s=on and 0s== off. The processor then reads the available input, now that is converted into the binary language and then instruct majority of the components accordingly. The information is read by the systems’s Random Access Memory (RAM), the RAM basically interprets the data. It does this interpretation through reacting to the 1 or a 0 and these sets of ones as well as zeros are normally transferred to the Random Access Memory at a very high rate of thousands of time, this is referred to as the rate of data transfer. The rate of data transfer also means the ability for the personal computer to read its input as well as write the input onto the hard disk or rather the hard drive (Agulnick, p.320). The Random Access Memory (RAM) constantly fills and clears the data that is temporarily kept in it; it does memory retaining, once the task is completed, the RAM empties out. There is a cache which is considered as the high speed Random Access Memory. The cache is responsible for the storage of commonly used kind of data as well as the instructions that originates from the computer processor. This controls the data from going to a lower RAM. It is split up to form two distinct levels, with the initial level known as the L1 ranging in its size from 32KB-128KB. This level stores the common instructions carried out within the data. Level two called L 2, is meant for data only. The final result of the read and written is data that is sent out to the output devices for instance; the monitor or printer. Conclusion It can therefore be concluded that a personal computer is composed of several components which interrelate but perform different functions in order to produce good results. It is important to note that the user is one of the major components. The operating system provides a personal computer with the infrastructure needed. The presence of the application software is also crucial because it consists of a series of instructions required to accomplish a task. Works Cited Williams, Michael R. A History of Computing Technology. Tk: IEEE Computer Edition, 1997. Campbell-Kelly, Martin &William, spray. Computer: A History of the Information Machine. New York: Basic Books, 1996. Gupta, Amar &Hoo-min D. Toong (Editors). Insights into Personal Computers. New York: IEEE Engineers Press, 1985. Microsoft (2005).Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 Hardware Requirements, retrieved 2010 08, 16 from, . Agulnick, Todd.Control of a computer through a position-sensed stylus.United States Patent. Vol. 5,295-397. 1994-09-13. retrieved 2009-03-14. Roy, Allan. ABibliographyOfThePersonalComputer. Allan Publishing. 2005. From, . Read More