Article: Computer Under The Hood
7 October 2006
We must have heard this over a million times. Computers donât think with numbers and alphabets but with just 1âs and 0âs. Some of us already know this but todayâs article is dedicated to the budding Engineers and hobbyists! The reason for writing this article is not to teach how a computer is made, but how it functions. How it communicates and store data.
Keeping in mind time is money lets start with the hardware. Itâs pure Electronics. All the ICâs, boards and cards have resistors, capacitors, transistors, inductors and diodes. Yes, surprisingly all the complicated circuitry is made up of just the 5 components! How many? Uncountable!! To get an idea, try counting the number of sugar grains in a cup of sugar. A single IC can contain from 30 to 300 million transistors. Other components total about half the number of transistors. Imagine, how these millions of components let you play games, watch movies, write boring articles and surf the web?
Internally the computer calculates and makes decision at astoundingly rapid speeds. This speed is only possible because of electricity since its made up of electrons, which are, well, pretty darn fast! The transistors act like switches. In electronics and computer speak, switch on is 1 and switch off is a 0. Never forget this!
Did you know switches can make decisions? How? Here you go â
âIf switch 1 or switch 2 is on then turn on switch 3 otherwise keep it off.â
Well, this on/off dance can take place about a million to trillion times a second! This decision making is carried out by a combination of transistors called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_gate" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Logic gate - Wikipedia</a>.
Next Article/Tutorial will be on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_gate" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Logic gate - Wikipedia</a> in general and how to see them in action using 74xx series ICâs.
Some Questions to get the cogs moving:
1. How many transistors are there on a single Cell Processor of Playstation 3?
2. How many of you ever owned a 286 or 386 or 486? (I had a 286 and a 386 10 years ago.)
3. How much memory could a 286, a 386 or a 486 address?
4. Whats the Voltage of logic 1 and logic 0? (give general ans and/or range, but specify)
NOTE: Some of the Q asked are important for first and second year engineering.
-xheavenlyx
Have Fun!