The Modern Computer- Week 2 - Part 1 Vocab

Question 1

Hardware

Items needed for daily and business computing.

Answer 1

External or internal devices and equipment that help you perform major functions.

Supplemental Info- Monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, and a desktop. Sometimes we might even add a webcam, speakers or printer setup. We’ll call these physical components hardware.

Question 2

Ports

open access for new possibilities

Answer 2

Connection points that we can connect devices to that extend the functionality of our computer.

Question 3

CPU

where it all begins in the body. so a man thinketh.

Answer 3

Central processing unit.
CPU is the brain of our computer, it does all the calculation and data processing. It communicates pretty heavily with RAM.

Question 4

RAM:

short period

Answer 4

Random Access Memory. Our computer’s short-term memory.
Example: to store data temporarily like typing something into the chat. RAM can hold billions of data.

Question 5

Hard drive

to keep over time.

Answer 5

It is a long term memory component that holds all of our data, which can include music, pictures, applications.

Question 6

Motherboard

thanks to your mother

Answer 6

The body or circulatory system of the computer that connects all the pieces together.

Question 7

Power supply

charge your phone

Answer 7

Converts electricity from our wall outlet onto a format that our computer can use.

Question 8

Programs

Chef in the kitchen

Answer 8

Basic instructions that tell the computer what to do.

Supplemental info- We typically store programs on durable media like hard drives, you can think of programs like cooking recipes, we keep these recipes all stored together in a cookbook, just like apps stored in a hard drive.

Question 9

External Data Bus (EDB)

doctor takes blood from your

Answer 9

It’s a row of wires that interconnect the parts of our computer.

Supplemental info- Kind of the veins in our body. When you send a voltage to one of the wires we say the state of the wire is On or 1, off or no voltage 0. EDB comes in different sizes, 8 bit, 16 bit, 32, even 64.

Question 10

Registers

to put away

Answer 10

An accessible location for storing the data that our CPU works with.
Example- our CPU wanted to add 2 numbers, one would be stored in register a, the other in register b, and the answer in register c.

Question 11

Address bus

A bus takes you from point A to point B

Answer 11

Connects the CPU to the MCC and sends over the location of the data, but not the data itself.

Question 12

Memory controller chip (MCC)

London

Answer 12

A bridge between the CPU and the RAM.
EX: a nerve in your brain connecting to your memories.

Question 13

CACHE

to come back quickly

Answer 13

The assigned stored location for recently or frequently accessed data; on a mobile app it is where anything that was changed or created with that app is stored.
There are 3 diff CACHE levels in a CPU. L1, L2, L3.

Question 14

Clock wire

Answer 14

When you send or receive data, it sends a voltage to that clock wire to let the CPU know it can start doing calculations.
Ex: for every tick, the CPU does one cycle of operations.

Question 15

Clock cycle

Answer 15

When you send voltage to the clock wire, its referred to as CLOCK CYCLE.
If you have lots of data to process in a command. You need to run lots of clock cycles.

Question 16

Clock speed

Answer 16

The maximum number of clock cycles that it can handle in a set in a certain time period.
Example- 3.40 gigahertz is 3.4 billion cycles per second. Just because it can run at this speed doesn’t mean it does, just means it can’t exceed this number.

Question 17

Overclocking

going up higher for more efficiency

Answer 17

It increases the rate of your CPU clock cycles in order to perform more tasks.
Example- Commonly used to increase performance in low end CPU’s. Ex: for gamers, but the cons are it can overheat.

Question 18

• Level 3 cache:

the first of its kind

Answer 18

L3 cache is the largest and slowest of CPU cache. However, it is often twice as fast as RAM.
L3 is the first CPU cache location to store data after it is transferred from RAM.
L3 cache is often shared by all of the cores in a single CPU

Question 19

• Level 2 cache

middle child

Answer 19

L2 cache holds less data than L3 cache, but it has faster access speeds.
L2 holds a copy of the most recently accessed data that is not currently in use by the CPU.
Each CPU core normally has its own L2 cache.

Question 20

• Level 1 cache

Answer 20

L1 cache is the fastest and smallest of the three CPU cache levels.
L1 holds the data currently in use by the CPU. Each CPU core usually has its own L1 cache.