IT : Programs & Hardware

 

Information Technology

    Information technology (IT) is the use of any computer, networking, storage, and other devices, infrastructures and & processes to create, process, exchange, & secure data.

    To be an IT support specialist you should first learn about programs, hardware, networking, operating system, software, & troubleshooting! we will discuss about all this in the next articles. Let's now start by programs & hardwares!

Programs & Hardwares

Programs 

 Programs are instructions that tell the computer what to do.

External Data Bus (EDB)

     Is a row of wives that interconnect the parts of our computer. 

We can have differentes sizes of EDB:

8 bits that send 1 byte at a time

16 bits, 32 bits, even 64 bits what means a lot of more data!

 CPU

      Inside CPU of our computers, we have registers, that store data that our CPU works with.

 Memory Control Chip (MMC)

    A bridge between CPU & RAM

Adress Bus

    Connects CPU to MCC

Cache 

    Smaller than RAM, but it lets us store data that we use often & also lets us quickly references it!

In general, we have three caches level : L1, L2, L3. So what do you think? which one is he fastest?

Yes, cache L1 is the fastest acced the data and also is the smaller!

Now, as we know, everything is binary in technology so it's so important to know how to count in binary!

Counting in Binary

For example, we want to convert 00011010 in decimal number so we will have 26, and for 01011000 = 88 in decimal, so how we do that? Here is a simple method to this operation so we write down those numbers:

128    64    32    16    8    2    1

Then we write under them the binary number we have, let's take the previous example :

128    64    32    16    8    4    2    1

  0      0      0      1     1    0    1     0  

so here 0 it's ''off'' and 1 it's ''on'', and we do the sum of ons, we will have:

16+8+2=26 => 00011010 = 26

Let's take another example : 10011010, so as we already did :

128    64    32    16    8    4    2    1

  1      0      0      1     1    0    1     0  

10011010 = 128+16+8+2 = 154

Did you hear about abstraction before?

Abstraction

Abstraction it's taking a relatively complex system & simplify it for our use i.e. when we use keyboard, mouse....

Before talking about hardwares, let's first talk about computer architecture!

Computer Architecture

    We have three layers:

Hardware layer: Made up of physical components of a computer

Operating layer: Allows hardware to communicate with the system

User: Interacts with the computer

Hardware

Ports: Connections points that we can connect devices to that extend the functionality of our computer.

CPU: Central Processing Unit is the brain of our computer; it does all the calculations & data processing.

RAM: Random Access Memory is our computer's short term memory.

Hard Drive: Holds all of our data, which includes all of our music, pictures, applications...

Motherboard: The body or circulatory system of the computer that connects all the pieces together.

In the next article we will discuss about all those components and its funtinality.

Now, before we finish, did your ever ask yourself how the CPU knows when the set of an instructions ends, and when a new one begin?

Well it's because the CPU has an internal clock that keeps its operation in synchronization!

That clock is connected to the clockwire.

Clock speed: The maximum number of clock cycles that it can handle in a certain time period (in a store on CPU: 3.4 GHz)

3.4 gigahertz is 3.4 billions cycles per second .

To exceed this number it's overclocking.

 YOU TECH 56