Chapter – 2

2.1. Hardware
2.1.1. The Processing Unit (CPU)
2.1.2. Input Unit
2.1.3. Output Unit
2.1.4. Memory Unit
2.2. Software
2.2.1. System Software
2.2.2. Application Software

2.1.1 CPU:
Central Processing Unit (CPU) consists of the following features −

 CPU is considered as the brain of the computer.

 CPU performs all types of data processing operations.
 It stores data, intermediate results, and instructions (program).
 It controls the operation of all parts of the computer.

CPU itself has following three components.

 Memory or Storage Unit

 Control Unit
 ALU(Arithmetic Logic Unit)
Memory or Storage Unit

This unit can store instructions, data, and intermediate results. This unit
supplies information to other units of the computer when needed. It is also
known as internal storage unit or the main memory or the primary storage or
Random Access Memory (RAM).
Its size affects speed, power, and capability. Primary memory and secondary
memory are two types of memories in the computer. Functions of the memory
unit are −
 It stores all the data and the instructions required for processing.
 It stores intermediate results of processing.
 It stores the final results of processing before these results are released to
an output device.
 All inputs and outputs are transmitted through the main memory.

Control Unit

This unit controls the operations of all parts of the computer but does not carry
out any actual data processing operations.
Functions of this unit are −
 It is responsible for controlling the transfer of data and instructions among
other units of a computer.
 It manages and coordinates all the units of the computer.
 It obtains the instructions from the memory, interprets them, and directs
the operation of the computer.
 It communicates with Input/Output devices for transfer of data or results
from storage.
 It does not process or store data.

ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit)

This unit consists of two subsections namely,

 Arithmetic Section
 Logic Section

Arithmetic Section

Function of arithmetic section is to perform arithmetic operations like addition,

subtraction, multiplication, and division. All complex operations are done by
making repetitive use of the above operations.

Logic Section

Function of logic section is to perform logic operations such as comparing,

selecting, matching, and merging of data.
2.1.2 Input Unit:
A unit which allows to receive the data from user.
Following are some of the important input devices which are used in a computer
−

 Keyboard
 Mouse
 Joy Stick
 Light pen
 Track Ball
 Scanner
 Graphic Tablet
 Microphone
 Magnetic Ink Card Reader(MICR)
 Optical Character Reader(OCR)
 Bar Code Reader
 Optical Mark Reader(OMR)

Keyboard

Keyboard is the most common and very popular input device which helps to
input data to the computer. The layout of the keyboard is like that of traditional
typewriter, although there are some additional keys provided for performing
additional functions.

Keyboards are of two sizes 84 keys or 101/102 keys, but now keyboards with
104 keys or 108 keys are also available for Windows and Internet.
The keys on the keyboard are as follows −
S.N Keys & Description
o

Typing Keys
1
These keys include the letter keys (A-Z) and digit keys (09) which generally
give the same layout as that of typewriters.

Numeric Keypad

2 It is used to enter the numeric data or cursor movement. Generally, it consists

of a set of 17 keys that are laid out in the same configuration used by most
adding machines and calculators.

Function Keys

3 The twelve function keys are present on the keyboard which are arranged in a
row at the top of the keyboard. Each function key has a unique meaning and is
used for some specific purpose.

Control keys

4 These keys provide cursor and screen control. It includes four directional arrow
keys. Control keys also include Home, End, Insert, Delete, Page Up, Page Down,
Control(Ctrl), Alternate(Alt), Escape(Esc).

Special Purpose Keys

5 Keyboard also contains some special purpose keys such as Enter, Shift, Caps
Lock, Num Lock, Space bar, Tab, and Print Screen.

Mouse

Mouse is the most popular pointing device. It is a very famous cursor-control

device having a small palm size box with a round ball at its base, which senses
the movement of the mouse and sends corresponding signals to the CPU when
the mouse buttons are pressed.
Generally, it has two buttons called the left and the right button and a wheel is
present between the buttons. A mouse can be used to control the position of the
cursor on the screen, but it cannot be used to enter text into the computer.
Advantages

 Easy to use
 Not very expensive
 Moves the cursor faster than the arrow keys of the keyboard.

Joystick

Joystick is also a pointing device, which is used to move the cursor position on a
monitor screen. It is a stick having a spherical ball at its both lower and upper
ends. The lower spherical ball moves in a socket. The joystick can be moved in
all four directions.

The function of the joystick is similar to that of a mouse. It is mainly used in

Computer Aided Designing (CAD) and playing computer games.

Light Pen

Light pen is a pointing device similar to a pen. It is used to select a displayed

menu item or draw pictures on the monitor screen. It consists of a photocell and
an optical system placed in a small tube.
When the tip of a light pen is moved over the monitor screen and the pen
button is pressed, its photocell sensing element detects the screen location and
sends the corresponding signal to the CPU.

Track Ball

Track ball is an input device that is mostly used in notebook or laptop computer,
instead of a mouse. This is a ball which is half inserted and by moving fingers on
the ball, the pointer can be moved.

Since the whole device is not moved, a track ball requires less space than a
mouse. A track ball comes in various shapes like a ball, a button, or a square.

Scanner

Scanner is an input device, which works more like a photocopy machine. It is

used when some information is available on paper and it is to be transferred to
the hard disk of the computer for further manipulation.
Scanner captures images from the source which are then converted into a
digital form that can be stored on the disk. These images can be edited before
they are printed.

Microphone

Microphone is an input device to input sound that is then stored in a digital

form.

The microphone is used for various applications such as adding sound to a

multimedia presentation or for mixing music.

Magnetic Ink Card Reader (MICR)

MICR input device is generally used in banks as there are large number of
cheques to be processed every day. The bank's code number and cheque
number are printed on the cheques with a special type of ink that contains
particles of magnetic material that are machine readable.
This reading process is called Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR). The
main advantages of MICR is that it is fast and less error prone.

Bar Code Readers

Bar Code Reader is a device used for reading bar coded data (data in the form
of light and dark lines). Bar coded data is generally used in labelling goods,
numbering the books, etc. It may be a handheld scanner or may be embedded
in a stationary scanner.

Bar Code Reader scans a bar code image, converts it into an alphanumeric
value, which is then fed to the computer that the bar code reader is connected
to.

2.1.3 Output Unit:

A unit which helps to show the output to user.
Following are some of the important output devices used in a computer.
  Monitors
 Graphic Plotter
 Printer

Monitors

Monitors, commonly called as Visual Display Unit (VDU), are the main output
device of a computer. It forms images from tiny dots, called pixels that are
arranged in a rectangular form. The sharpness of the image depends upon the
number of pixels.
There are two kinds of viewing screen used for monitors.

 Cathode-Ray Tube (CRT)

 Flat-Panel Display

Cathode-Ray Tube (CRT) Monitor

The CRT display is made up of small picture elements called pixels. The smaller
the pixels, the better the image clarity or resolution. It takes more than one
illuminated pixel to form a whole character, such as the letter ‘e’ in the word
help.

A finite number of characters can be displayed on a screen at once. The screen

can be divided into a series of character boxes - fixed location on the screen
where a standard character can be placed. Most screens are capable of
displaying 80 characters of data horizontally and 25 lines vertically.
There are some disadvantages of CRT −

 Large in Size
 High power consumption

Flat-Panel Display Monitor

The flat-panel display refers to a class of video devices that have reduced
volume, weight and power requirement in comparison to the CRT. You can hang
them on walls or wear them on your wrists. Current uses of flat-panel displays
include calculators, video games, monitors, laptop computer, and graphics
display.

The flat-panel display is divided into two categories −

 Emissive Displays − Emissive displays are devices that convert
electrical energy into light. For example, plasma panel and LED (Light-
Emitting Diodes).
 Non-Emissive Displays − Non-emissive displays use optical effects to
convert sunlight or light from some other source into graphics patterns.
For example, LCD (Liquid-Crystal Device).

Printers

Printer is an output device, which is used to print information on paper.

Types:
 Dot Matrix Printer
 Line Printer
 Inkjet Printer
 Laser Printer.
Inkjet Printers
Inkjet printers are non-impact character printers based on a relatively new
technology. They print characters by spraying small drops of ink onto paper.
Inkjet printers produce high quality output with presentable features.
They make less noise because no hammering is done and these have many
styles of printing modes available. Color printing is also possible. Some models
of Inkjet printers can produce multiple copies of printing also.
Advantages

 High quality printing

 More reliable
Disadvantages

 Expensive as the cost per page is high

 Slow as compared to laser printer

2.1.4 Memory Unit:

Memory unit is the amount of data that can be stored in the storage unit.
Memory hierarchy:
Auxiliary Memory:
Devices that provide backup storage are called auxiliary memory. For
example: Magnetic disks and tapes are commonly used auxiliary devices. Other
devices used as auxiliary memory are magnetic drums, magnetic bubble
memory and optical disks.
It is not directly accessible to the CPU, and is accessed using the Input/Output
channels.

Main Memory:
It is of two types primary and secondary memory. RAM is said to be primary
which is faster when compare to ROM, but data will get erased automatically so
its said to be volatile memory whereas ROM is said to be secondary and
permanent memory, data stored in ROM will not erase automatically, so its said
to be Non-Volatile memory. ROM has high storage when compare to RAM.

Cache Memory:
The data or contents of the main memory that are used again and again by CPU,
are stored in the cache memory so that we can easily access that data in shorter
time. It is also called as cache.
Whenever the CPU needs to access memory, it first checks the cache memory. If
the data is not found in cache memory then the CPU moves onto the main
memory. It also transfers block of recent data into the cache and keeps on
deleting the old data in cache to accomodate the new one.
Register:
It is faster than all. Its components are:
Accumulator: Contains result of ALU
Program Counter: Contains address of next instruction.
MAR: Memory Address Register holds the address of operand.
MDR: Memory Data Register holds the data value.
CIR: Current Instruction Register contains the current instruction.
Byte Description:
This storage capacity is expressed in terms of Bytes.
The following table explains the main memory storage units −

[Link] Unit & Description

.

Bit (Binary Digit)

1
A binary digit is logical 0 and 1 representing a passive or an active state of a
component in an electric circuit.

Nibble
2
A group of 4 bits is called nibble.

Byte
3 A group of 8 bits is called byte. A byte is the smallest unit, which can represent
a data item or a character.

Word
A computer word, like a byte, is a group of fixed number of bits processed as a
unit, which varies from computer to computer but is fixed for each computer.
4
The length of a computer word is called word-size or word length. It may be as
small as 8 bits or may be as long as 96 bits. A computer stores the information
in the form of computer words.

The following table lists some higher storage units −

[Link] Unit & Description

.

1 Kilobyte (KB)
1 KB = 1024 Bytes

Megabyte (MB)
2
1 MB = 1024 KB
 GigaByte (GB)
3
1 GB = 1024 MB

TeraByte (TB)
4
1 TB = 1024 GB

PetaByte (PB)
5
1 PB = 1024 TB

2.2 Software:
A set of instructions that achieve a single outcome are called program or
procedure. Many programs functioning together to do a task make a software.
For example, a word-processing software enables the user to create, edit and
save documents. A web browser enables the user to view and share web pages
and multimedia files. There are three categories of software −

 System Software
 Application Software
 Utility Software
2.2.1 System Software

Software required to run the hardware parts of the computer and other
application software are called system software. System software acts
as interface between hardware and user applications. An interface is needed
because hardware devices or machines and humans speak in different
languages.
Machines understand only binary language i.e. 0 (absence of electric signal) and
1 (presence of electric signal) while humans speak in English, French, German,
Tamil, Hindi and many other languages. English is the pre-dominant language of
interacting with computers. Software is required to convert all human
instructions into machine understandable instructions. And this is exactly what
system software does.
Based on its function, system software is of three types −

 Operating System
 Language Processor
 Device Drivers

Operating System

System software that is responsible for functioning of all hardware parts and
their interoperability to carry out tasks successfully is called operating system
(OS). OS is the first software to be loaded into computer memory when the
computer is switched on and this is called booting. OS manages a computer’s
basic functions like storing data in memory, retrieving files from storage
devices, scheduling tasks based on priority, etc. Eg: Windows, Unix, Linux,
Android etc.

Language Processor

As discussed earlier, an important function of system software is to convert all

user instructions into machine understandable language. When we talk of
human machine interactions, languages are of three types −
 Machine-level language − This language is nothing but a string of 0s
and 1s that the machines can understand. It is completely machine
dependent.
 Assembly-level language − This language introduces a layer of
abstraction by defining mnemonics. Mnemonics are English like words
or symbols used to denote a long string of 0s and 1s. For example, the
word “READ” can be defined to mean that computer has to retrieve data
from the memory. The complete instruction will also tell the memory
address. Assembly level language is machine dependent.
 High level language − This language uses English like statements and
is completely independent of machines. Programs written using high level
languages are easy to create, read and understand.
Program written in high level programming languages like Java, C++, etc. is
called source code. Set of instructions in machine readable form is
called object code or machine code. System software that converts source
code to object code is called language processor. There are three types of
language interpreters−
 Assembler − Converts assembly level program into machine level
program.
 Interpreter − Converts high level programs into machine level program
line by line.
 Compiler − Converts high level programs into machine level programs at
one go rather than line by line.

Device Drivers

System software that controls and monitors functioning of a specific device on

computer is called device driver. Each device like printer, scanner,
microphone, speaker, etc. that needs to be attached externally to the system
has a specific driver associated with it. When you attach a new device, you need
to install its driver so that the OS knows how it needs to be managed.

2.2.2 Application Software

A software that performs a single task and nothing else is called application
software. Application software are very specialized in their function and
approach to solving a problem. So a spreadsheet software can only do
operations with numbers and nothing else. A hospital management software will
manage hospital activities and nothing else. Here are some commonly used
application software −

 Word processing
 Spreadsheet
 Presentation
 Database management
 Multimedia tools

Utility Software

Application software that assist system software in doing their work is

called utility software. Thus utility software is actually a cross between
system software and application software. Examples of utility software include
−

 Antivirus software
 Disk management tools
 File management tools
 Compression tools
 Backup tools

Difference between System and Application Software:

Sr. Key System Software. Application Software.
No.

Definition System Software is the type of On other hand Application

software which is the interface Software is the type of software
1 between application software which runs as per user request.
and system. It runs on the platform which is
provide by system software.

Developme In general System software are While in case of Application

nt Language developed in low level software high level language is
language which is more used for their development as
2
compatible with the system they are developed as some
hardware in order to interact specific purpose software.
with.

Usage System software is used for On other hand Application

3 operating computer hardware. software is used by user to
perform specific task.

Installation System software are installed On other hand Application

4 on the computer when software are installed according
operating system is installed. to user’s requirements.

User As mentioned in above points On other hand in application

interaction system software are specific to software user can interacts with
5 system hardware so less or no it as user interface is available
user interaction available in in this case.
case of system software.

Dependency System software can run On other hand in application

independently. It provides software can’t run
6 platform for running independently. They can’t run
application software. without the presence of system
software..

Examples Some examples of system On other hand some examples

software’s are compiler, of application software’s are
7
assembler, debugger, driver, word processor, web browser,
etc. media player, etc.