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Glossary for Computer Concepts: hardware

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ALU: Contains the circuits that carry out instructions, such as mathematical and logical operations.
BIOS: The BIOS stores information about your hardware configuration along with the boot program.
bus: electrical pathways on the motherboard that connect the components.
BYOD: A trend where employees are bringing devices to work and pressuring employers to support them.
cache: A temporary storage area for frequently accessed or recently accessed data; speeds up the operation of the computer; size measured in megabytes (MB)
chip: Developed in 1950s, it integrated multiple transistors into a single module called an integrated circuit.
circuit: A circuit is created by combining transistors, and sometimes other components, in a manner that accomplishes a specific task
clock: Speed of the processor’s internal clock, which dictates how fast the processor can process data; usually measured in GHz (gigahertz, or billions of pulses per second)
CPU components: The CPU is made up of many components. The main ones are Control unit, Arithmetic/logic unit (ALU), Registers, Cache, Clock speed
CPU: a group of circuits that perform the processing in a computer, typically in one integrated circuit called a microprocessor
digital assistant: Streamlined interfaces like Apple’s Siri, Google Now, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana
firmware: programs and data from the computer manufacturer, including the boot process used to start the computer.
FSB: The most important bus on a PC motherboard is the front front-side bus, or FSB. FSB speed is important and is typically listed with the specifications of a computer.
hardware: the tangible parts of a computer or digital device and typically includes support for processing, storage, input, and output.
Moore's Law: states that the number of transistors on a chip will double about every two years.
motherboard: the primary circuit board of a computer to which all components are connected, including the CPU.
multiprocessing: also called parallel processing, is processing that occurs using more than one processing unit to increase productivity and performance.
processing: carries out the instructions provided by software. Digital devices process bits of data into useful information and services.
raspberry: Small, inexpensive motherboard containing entire computer systems used to build all kinds of electronic gadgets
registers: Hold the bytes currently being processed
ROM: Read-only memory (ROM) provides permanent storage for data and instructions that do not change, such as firmware.
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