Introduction To computers

Chapter 4 Data
Processing
Lecture 3

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Introduction To computers

Chapter Outline

I. Transforming data into

information
How computers represent data
How computers process data
Factors affecting processor
speed
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Introduction To computers

Volatile Memory
Needs power to store data.
People usually mean RAM whey talking about
computers memory.
Physically RAM consists of chips on small circuit
board.
Two types of RAM are found in personal computers.
Single inline memory modules(SIMM) and
Double inline memory modules(DIMM)

SO-DIMM (small outline DIMM) is for laptop

computers.
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Introduction To computers

Contd
The random in RAM means any portion in RAM can
be accessed at any time.
If it the access method would be sequential, the
computer would be very slow.
CPU uses memory address to store and retrieve
each piece of data.
memory address is a number that indicates
location on the memory chips.
RAM is not only used by computers CPU but
components such as video and sound cards as
well.
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Introduction To computers
Factors affecting processor speed

Apart from Memory and registers, there are other

components that affect the processors speed.
Cache memory, clock speed and the data bus
affect the processors speed.
Registers
Registers are normally measured by the number of
bits they can hold, for example, an "8-bit register" or
a "32-bit register or even 64-bit register
The size of the registers which is sometimes called the
word size indicates the amount of data with which
the computer can process at any given time.
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Introduction To computers
Factors affecting processor speed

The bigger the word size, the more

quickly the computer can process a set
of data.
People often refer to 32-bit
processors or 64-bit processors or
even 64-bit computers this
terminology refers to the size of the
registers in the processor.
With all other factors kept equal, a CPU
with 32-bit registers can process twice
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6
as fast as one
with 16-bit registers.

Introduction To computers

Memory and computing power

The amount of memory(RAM) in a computer can have a
profound impact on a computers power.
The bigger the size of RAM in a computer, the more
the computer can run faster.
The computer doesnt necessarily have to load an
entire program into memory to run it however the
greater the amount of the program that fits into
memory, the faster the program runs.
To run windows for example, the computer usually
doesnt need to load all its files into memory to run
properly.
Only the most essential parts come into memory.
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Introduction To computers

Contd
If the processor needs to access other parts of OS or a
program on the disk, it can unload or swap out none
essential parts from RAM to hard disk. Then the
computer can load or swap in the program code it
needs.
Although this is an effective method for managing a
limited amount of memory, the computers system
performance is slower.
Because the swapping process occupies the CPU,
memory and hard disk.
Swapping unused contents of RAM to the hard disk is
known as Virtual Memory
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