MGCR 331 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Hertz, Compactflash, Pointing Stick
Document Summary
From a hardware perspective, computers work with bits and bytes. Computers use electrical pulses to have two states: on and off. Binary digit (bit) is the smallest unit of information: either a 1 or 0. Byte is composed of 8 bits, combined to mean something. Kilobyte = 1000 bytes: ex: 2kb = 1 type written page. Megabyte = 1,000,000 bytes: ex: 1mb = a small novel, ex: 5mb = 30 second of tv quality video. Gigabyte = 1000,000,000 bytes: ex: 2gb = 20 meters of shelved books, ex: 20gb = a good collection of beethoven"s work. Terabyte = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes: ex: 1tb = all the x-ray films in a large hospital, ex: 10tb = printed collection of the us library of congress. Memory ram temporary storage for data and instructions. Cpu microprocessor carries out the instructions. More cycles means faster processing which becomes more expensive.
