Introduction to

Computer
MD. MUMTAHIN HABIB ULLAH
MAZUMDER
LECTURER
UNITED INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

COURTESY OF: SHOIB AHMED SHOURAV AND KAZI

SAJEED MEHRAB, LECTURER, UIU
Objectives

 Introduction and Computer Software

 How does a computer work?
(Words)
Hardware?

 Now, we have to convert this code into a sequence of 1’s and 0’s,
so that the hardware can understand it.
 Chips

 Transistor - vital electronic

building block

 Transistor = “Switch”

 Chips can contain billions

of transistors

 e.g. CPU chips, memory chips,

flash chips
Transistors
 Bits
 Transistors are on or off (two states)
 Use binary (base 2) instead of decimal (base 10)
 "Bit": 0 or 1 (off/on)
 Equivalent to digit in decimal
 How many numbers can we store with 1 bit? 2? 10?
 Bytes
 Individual bits aren't that useful

 Solution: group 8 bits together into bytes

 Optimized to handle bytes instead of bits
Lots of Bytes
• Fact: 2^10 is 1024
• 1 kilobyte (KB) = 1024 bytes
• 1 megabyte (MB) = 1024KB
• Used to measure audio clips and image sizes
• 1 gigabyte (GB) = 1024MB
• Used to measure video sizes and computer storage space
• 1 terabyte (TB) = 1024GB
• Used to measure computer storage space
Three major parts of a computer

 CPU
 RAM
 Persistent Storage
CPU
CPU

• CPU - Central Processing Unit

• Acts like a brain: follows the instructions in the code

• Performs computations, e.g. add two numbers

• "gigahertz" = 1 billion operations per second

• A "2 gigahertz" CPU performs 2 billion operations per

second
RAM
RAM
• RAM - Random Access Memory

• Temporary, working storage of bytes

• RAM stores both code and data (temporarily)

• e.g. open an image in Photoshop

- image data loaded into the bytes of RAM
• e.g. adding 2 to a number in a calculator
- manipulating bytes in RAM
• e.g. open a browser
- Browser code gets loaded in RAM
 “Non - Persistent"
- RAM is not persistent. State is gone when power
turned off
- e.g. You're working on a doc, then power goes out
and you lose your work (vs. "Save")

 RAM is relatively fast and able to retrieve the value

of any particular byte in a few nanoseconds (1
nanosecond is 1 billionth of a second).
Persistent Storage
Persistent Storage

 Persistent storage of bytes

 "Persistent" means preserved even when not
powered
 e.g. Hard drive - stores bytes as a magnetic pattern
on a spinning disk
- aka (also known as) “hard disk”
 e.g. Flash Drive- is a transistor-like persistent storage
technology
 -aka “USB Flash drive”
 -aka “SSD: Solid State Disk”
Motherboard