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Computing Paper 1

System Architecture

• General Purpose Computer: A computer designed to carry out lots of different tasks. These may be X-Boxs, tablets or smart phones.
• They could be used to do all sorts of things such as:
• Play games
• Surf the internet
• Listen to a random band on Youtube
• Application: A software program that lets a user carry out a specific task.
• Hardware: The physical parts of a computer such as a graphics card or a CD drive.
• CPU: The central processing unit of the computer. Holds the control unit and the ALU and processes data and instructions
• Secondary storage: Non-volatile, external storage devices used for long-term file storage.
• Input device: A device that is used to input data into the computer e.g. a keyboard or a mouse.
• Output device: Used to output data from a computer e.g. a speaker or a monitor.
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System Architecture

• CU: The control unit which fetches, decodes and executes instructions sent to the CPU. It also issues signals that control the physical hardware of the CPU.
• ALU: The Arithmetic logic unit carries out arithmetic and logic operations such as maths calculations.
• Registers:High speed memory in small amounts contained within the CPU. The registers are:
• program counter
• memory address register (MAR)
• memory data register (MDR)
• current instruction register (CIR)
• accumulator (ACC)
• Cache:High speed temporary memory that stores recently used files so they can be accessed quicker by the CPU than from RAM
• Buses:A channel that data is transported through.
• Clock:A CPU component that regulates all the other components by sending out regular pulses
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System Architecture