Module 2 – Classification of Computers with its output and input devices

and even internal components.

Unit 1: COMPUTER ORGANIZATION | Lesson
2 – Computer Classification o Molex keyed connector
are used to provide power to
2.1 COMPUTER CLASSIFICATION AND optical drives, video cards,
CATEGORY CD/DVD drives and the older
version of hard drives.
A. PERSONAL COMPUTERS
o PATA (Parallel Advanced
Refers to computing system made up of Technology Attachment) and
multiple physical components of SATA (Serial Advanced
computer hardware where we can install Technology Attachments) are
an operating system and different bus interfaces that we used to
application software. When we say PC or connect the hard drives to the
personal computers, we usually refer to motherboard (a bus interface
desktop computers. is a communication interface
for the motherboard or the
.The physical or obvious feature or computer and the secondary
components that can make us easily device).
distinguish it from other computing
devices are: o PS/2 Cable and socket –
used to connect the old
 The case/Chassis The case/chassis models of keyboard and
of a personal computer contains mouse to the system unit.
the framework to support the
internal components while o The ethernet cable
providing enclosure for protection. connector (the RJ45) is used for
Could be made up of steel, the LAN (non wireless Local
aluminum or plastic. Area Network) connection of
the computer to the internet or
 Power supply – Power supply must the network.
provide enough power for the
components that are currently o VGA (Video Graphics
installed and allow for other Array) and HDMI (High-
component that may be added at Definition Multimedia Interface)
a later time. Usually we have an are video and multimedia
AVR (Automatic Voltage interfaces that is used to
Regulator) as our reliable power connect the computer to
supply system. We also have UPS or external display devices
uninterruptible power supply that (projectors or another monitor,
protects our personal computer etc).
against power outages and
unexpected and improper ‘power B. MOBILE COMPUTER AND MOBILE
off’ of the computer. Usually (if not DEVICES
all) UPS also have an AVR installed
in its power supply system. Mobile computer are the systems that we
can be able to use even when someone
 Connectors –number of obvious being mobile and therefore changing
connectors and wires associated location. It is a computer where all
necessary resources (hardware and
software can be portable and taken out  Tablet computers: these are
to the field). It is a range of solutions that computers with a large screen and
enable user mobility by providing access no built-in keyboard. Input is
to data anytime from any location. through a stylus or touchscreen.
The idea is that using these
They can be differentiated from other computers is like using a tablet of
computing device in terms of: paper.

 Battery – instead of directly getting  Notebook/laptop computers: so far

power from a power source, these have been the portable
mobile devices like laptop computing device of choice.
computers have batteries to hold
and store energy to keep the  Personal digital assistants (PDAs):
device running even if it’s not referred to as handheld PC. The
connected to the “live” power device included an electronic
supply. This feature enables this cradle to connect to a PC and
computing device to be mobile pass information back and forth. It
and portable. also featured a data-entry system
called “graffiti,” which involved
 Input devices – while other writing with a stylus using a slightly
computing systems uses wires and altered alphabet that the device
connectors for their input devices, recognized.
mobile computers usually have
input devices embedded or  Mobile phones including a
installed in the whole machine. restricted key set primarily
Laptop has its touchpad and intended but not restricted to for
keyboard included in one vocal communications, as cell
package and cellphone have phones, smart phones, phone-
touchscreens and keypads. pads, etc.

 Communication – the main way of o Cell phones: most cell

communication in a mobile phones on the market
computer is by using wireless today offer some kind of
communication. Be it reachable data service. Most offer a
via wireless connection on the short messaging service
internet, or through data service (SMS) and many also offer
providers that lets us access data wireless access protocol
wherever we are. (WAP) services that allow a
minimal form of Web
There are at least three different classes of access.
mobile computing items:
o Smart Phones: we are just
 Portable computers: compacted now starting to see viable
lightweight units including a full products that offer both
character set keyboard and the capabilities of cell
primarily intended as hosts for phones and PDAs. This is a
software that may be powerful combination
parameterized, as laptops, whose proponents view it
notebooks, notepads, etc. as the device to end all
devices.
  Wearable computers: mostly  Application Servers – Sometimes
limited to functional keys and referred to as a type of
primarily intended as incorporation middleware occupy a large chunk
of software agents, as watches, of computing territory between
wristbands, necklaces, keyless database servers and the end
implants, etc. user, and they often connect the
two.
C. GAME CONSOLES
 Audio/Video Servers –
A video game console is an interactive Audio/Video servers bring
entertainment computer or modified multimedia capabilities to Web
computer system that produces a video sites by enabling them to
display signal which can be used with a broadcast streaming multimedia
display device (a television, monitor, etc.) content. Streaming is a technique
to display a video game. for transferring data such that it
can be processed as a steady and
Examples of Game Consoles: continuous stream.

 Playstation  Chat Servers – Chat servers enable

a large number of users to
 Nintendo Wii exchange information in an
environment similar to Internet
 Xbox newsgroups that offer real-time
discussion capabilities. Real time
Advantages of Game Consoles: means occurring immediately.
a. Having special controller or joystick for
playing games and every game console  Proxy Servers – Proxy servers sit
has a different joystick. between a client program
b. Having a wireless / do not use cable typically a Web browser and an
controller. external server (typically another
c. Having a system that can be used for server on the Web) to filter
internet surfing requests, improve performance,
and share connections.
D. SERVERS
The major components of a server are
A Server is a computer or device similar to a typical PC. In fact, you can use
on a network that manages a typical PC as a server for a small
network resources. network.

Servers are often dedicated. Here are some of the properties and
Which means, they perform no components that we may see in a server:
other tasks besides their server
tasks.  Case – Case styles vary greatly.
Some are similar to desktop
Server types: models. Some are designed to be
mounted into a rack.
 Web Servers – A Web server serves
static content to a Web browser  Hot-Swap Components – Servers
by loading a file from a disk and are generally designed to provide
serving it across the network to a continuous service with minimal
user's Web browser. interruptions and data loss. The
 main feature that most servers use The characteristics of the mainframe
to provide this continuous service is computers are defined as follows:
hot-swap technology. Hot-swap
technology allows a component  Reliability – The system’s hardware
to be removed or installed while components have extensive self-
the system is running. checking and self-recovery
capabilities.
 Power Supply – The power supply
converts standard 120-volt or 240-  Availability – The system can
volt AC power into lower DC recover from a failed component
voltage levels that can be used by without impacting the rest of the
the motherboard and other running system.
devices inside the computer case.
 Serviceability – The system can
 Motherboard – Servers generally determine why a failure occurred.
use a backplane. A backplane is a
simple motherboard designed with Typical mainframe workloads:
minimal components. It typically
serves as the interface of all the  Batch processing – The mainframe
major components. computers has the ability to
process terabytes of data from
 BIOS – The BIOS contains a small high-speed storage devices and
software program that starts the produce valuable output.
server boot operation when power
is applied to the server.  Online transaction processing
(OLTP) – Transaction processing
 Central Processing Unit (CPU) – that occurs interactively with the
One major difference between a user is referred to as online
server and a typical PC is that transaction processing.
many servers have multiple CPUs
installed rather than just one. When F. SUPER COMPUTERS
multiple CPUs are installed, the
server can perform parallel Supercomputers are used for large and
processing. complex mathematical computations.
Mainframes are used as storage for large
databases and serve a maximum number
of users at a time.
E. MAINFRAME
G. EMBEDDED COMPUTERS
A mainframe is the central data
repository, or hub, in a corporation’s data An embedded system is a special-purpose
processing center, linked to users through computer system designed to perform
less powerful devices such as workstations one or a few dedicated functions, usually
or terminals. Centralizing the data in a with real-time computing constraints. It is a
single mainframe repository saves microcontroller or microprocessor based
customers from having to manage which is designed to perform a specific
updates to more than one copy of their task. It is usually embedded as part of a
business data, which increases the complete device including hardware and
likelihood that the data is current. mechanical parts.
An embedded system has three Types of Embedded systems:
components:
 Stand alone embedded systems –
 It has hardware. examples: mp3 players, digital
cameras, video game consoles,
 It has application software. microwave ovens and
temperature measurement
 It has Real Time Operating system systems.
(RTOS) that supervises the
application software and provide  Real time embedded systems –
mechanism to let the processor run gives a required output in a
a process as per scheduling by particular time. Can be soft or hard
following a plan to control the real time systems.
latencies.
 Networked embedded systems –
Characteristics of an Embedded System: related to a network to access the
resources (LAN, WAN or the
 Single-functioned – An embedded internet).
system usually performs a
specialized operation and does  Mobile embedded systems – used
the same repeatedly. in portable embedded devices like
cell phones, mobiles, digital
 Tightly constrained – must be small, cameras, mp3 players and PDAs.
cost-effective, fast, and consume
minimum power. 2.2 COMPUTER AND THE SOCIETY

 Reactive and Real time – must  Education – Students have access

continually react to changes in the to new and different types of
system's environment and information, can manipulate it
compute certain results in real time through graphic displays, and
without any delay. communicate their results in a
variety of media.
 Microprocessor based – must be  Entertainment – Most of the movies
microprocessor or microcontroller today use computer graphics to
based. make things more realistic but not
real. Computers also bring us the
 Memory – usually embeds in ROM, digital/computer games that even
no secondary memories required. enables us to connect with other
players around the globe.
 Connected – must have  Business – Business uses computers
connected peripherals to connect for keeping track of accounts,
input and output devices. money, and records. The Internet
has lead to the birth and evolution
 HW-SW systems – Software is used of electronic commerce or E-
for more features and flexibility. commerce.
Hardware is used for performance  Health – In pharmacies, the
and security. pharmacists use computers to
keep a record of what medication
to give to a patient and the
amount they need. Scientists need
 the help of computers to find cures for diseases.
operation in memory or in a
. temporary register.

3 COMPUTER PROCESSES (Processes, Basic Parts of a CPU for Processing

Processor)
 Instruction Pointer – tells the CPU
The CPU is the brain of the computer where the instruction or data is
and responsible for processing the stored.
information we need.
 Instruction Fetch – takes the
3.1 PROCESSES instruction and data from the
memory that the instruction
Processing data is the most important pointer specifies.
activity in the computer, and so the
task of the processor is to interpret and  Instruction Decoder – takes the
execute program instructions, in order instruction from Fetch, and
to transform data into information. It is decodes it so that it can be
the transformation process to convert used by other parts of the CPU
the input into output. or the Computer.

These processes are performed by the  Register – one of the more basic
CPU. The CPU processes only binary parts of memory where the data
data. This means that all of the data, is stored. It can store data which
such as numbers, letters, colors, or has been processed or will be
actions to be performed, are stored in processed.
bits and bytes.
 ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) –
A CPU has four basic tasks that it used by the CPU to perform the
performs. They are Fetch, Decode, calculations; completes the
Execute, Output/Store. We call this the functions that the instructions tell
instruction cycle. it to perform.

1. Fetch Instruction – The control  Control Unit – specifies when the

unit fetches (gets) the program different operations on the CPU
instruction from memory. are to be done. For example, it
tells the instruction fetch when
2. Decode Instruction – The control to fetch data, or the instruction
unit decodes the instruction decoder when to decode data.
(decides what it means) and
then moves the necessary data During this beginning and end phase,
from memory to the ALU. data moves as directed from the CU. To
do these tasks, it should be clear that
3. Execute Instruction – The ALU the CPU needs to store some data
performs the requested action, temporarily. It must remember the
by executing the arithmetic or location of the last instruction so that it
logical instructions on the data. can know where to get the next
instruction.
4. Store (write) Result – The ALU
writes or stores the result of this The CPU needs to store instructions and
data temporarily while an instruction is
being executed. In other words, the Multicore vs Multiprocessor
CPU needs a small internal memory.
These storage locations are generally Originally, CPUs were manufactured
referred as registers. with a single core that did all of the
work. As computers became more
3.2 PROCESSOR advanced, it was found that a single
core could no longer handle the
The CPU is comprised of millions of logic workload which resulted in the CPU
gates embedded into it which then are becoming a bottleneck. The solution
used to complete a variety of different was simple: add more cores. Each core
operations. Although the CPU needs is basically a whole new processor, so
only a few parts to do its job, it has by adding a second core the power of
been modified to increase the the CPU was essentially doubled. More
performance. and more software is taking advantage
of the multiple cores now available
One of the weaknesses of the basic within CPUs resulting in better and
CPU was that it was not doing any better performance.
processing during the time that it
fetched an instruction from the Examples:
computer memory. To reduce this, a
memory storage area was created  Intel’s Core Duo, Core 2 Duo
inside the CPU called Cache or L1 type (dual core)
Cache.
 Pentium has quad core
The Cache is very fast, and is used to processor (four cores)
store information that the CPU needed
to access the most. Level 2 Cache was  AMD Athlon 64 FX (dual core)
also created for the CPU. It was similar
to L1 Cache. Now that the CPU has to On the other hand, computers that
wait much less for the data to be have multiple CPUs within a single
processed, the speed at which the computer, sharing some or all of the
data can be processed had to be system’s memory and I/O facilities, are
enhanced. called multiprocessor systems. These
are needed for larger tasks and heavier
To do this, multiple ALUs (Arithmetic processes, for specific OS that can
Logic Unit) were placed on the CPU, so handle multiprocessors such as
that many more calculation was done Windows NT, Unix (server operating
each clock cycle. systems).

Processor Specifications to Consider Hyperthreading

 The clock speed (MHz/GHz) – Hyperthreading increases multitasking

how many instructions per efficiency on processors. It makes your
second it can process. For one computer think that there are twice as
second, a 10MHz processor can many cores on the CPU than there
process 3,000,000 instructions. actually are.
Imagine how much instruction a
2.8 GHz CPU (Intel Pentium 4) If your CPU supports hyperthreading
can complete per second. and has 4 cores, it appears to the
computer like there are actually 8
cores. Hyperthreading allows a core to
run a second job if there is any
downtime in the first job.

L Cache

Cache serves essentially the same

purpose as the system RAM as it is a
temporary storage location for data but
included in the CPU.

 L1 Cache – smallest, fastest, per

core (32KB to 64KB per core).

 L2 Cache – larger than L1,

slightly slower, 256KB to 1MB per
core.

 L3 Cache – up to 20MB or more,

slower, shared across all cores,
still much faster than system
RAM.

Architecture

 32-bit processor – includes a 32-

bit register, can store
4,294,967,296 values.

 64-bit processor – includes a 64-

bit register, can store
18,446,744,073,709,551,616
values.

Simply put, a 64-bit processor is more

capable than a 32-bit processor
because it can handle more data at
once. Due to variances in CPU
architecture, two processors with the
same clock speed will not necessarily
perform the same job in the same
amount of time.