What is the purpose of the S-boxes in DES?

The S-boxes are the nonlinear part of DES that makes it difficult to break the
algorithm and secure against linear and differential cryptanalysis. the s-boxes
provide the "confusion" of data and key values, whilst the permutation P then
spreads this as widely as possible, so each S-box output affects as many S-box
inputs in the next round as possible, giving "diffusion".

There are 8 s-boxes also known as the substitution boxes, is a table that consist of
four rows and 16 columns with 64 entries all together. They take in 6-bits and
produce or output 4-bits. That is, the 48-bits into 8 S-boxes will be 6-bits each.
However the 6-bits is represented in binary form of say, 010100. The two outer
bits (the first and the last bit) represents the row (one of the four rows) and the
inner four bits represent the columns (one of the 16 columns). The cell where the
row and the column meets represents the value in decimal of the output. This is
then converted to binary as the output. From the example 010100, the first and last
digits 00 = the row which is the first row (00, 01, 10, 11) and the inner four digits
1010= the column. All 8 S-boxes will output 4-bits each in similar way and that is
32-bits output that is then permutated and further processed in the next round.