CPSC-1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Hard Disk Drive, Central Processing Unit, Machine Code

• School: Clemson University
• Department: Computer Science
• Course: CPSC-1010
• Professor: Catherine Hochrine

Document Summary

Lecture 2 part 1 unix and computer basics. Unix is an operating system: manages the software and hardware on the computer, mediates access by processes to the. Why learn unix: developed at bell labs in the 1960s, basis for many modern (non-windows) operating systems, unix philosophy . Create small, modular utilities that do one thing well . Single file system everything is a file . Cpu: central processing unit, processor, component in a computer that interprets instructions and processes data, the brains of the computer, two main components: Arithmetic logic unit (alu) arithmetic and logical operations. Decodes them and executes them, invoking alu when necessary. Difference between memory and storage: memory. Where computer stores what it is thinking about . More memory > computer can think about more at same time: storage. Info in storage must be loaded into memory for cpu to access it. More storage allows you to store more on your computer but doesn"t really affect performance.