1.1- Systems Architecture

The physical things in a computer system, eg. CPU, motherboard

The programs or applications that a computer system runs, eg. operating system

A computer system that has been designed for a dedicated function as part of a bigger system. They have limited functions which are hard to change.

Low cost, small, reliable, robust, low power

-execute the instructions of the programs, -process data -manage the rest of the hardware resources

Control Unit (CU), Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU), Cache

-Manage the fetch-execute cycle -Controls the flow of data in and out the CPU -Sends signals to direct the operations

Carries out the calculations, logic operations and contains the accumulator

Very fast memory that stores regularly used data, so the CPU can access it quickly

• Registers • Cache • RAM

Holds the single memory address of the instruction for each cycle

Stores intermediate results of calculations in the ALU

Holds the single memory address of the data being processed

Stores the data that is fetched from or to be sent to memory

Holds the program instructions and data

More instructions can be carried out per second

Parallel processing can take place: it can execute separate instructions at once which enables multitasking, so it can process a batch of data faster.

Faster access to more data it needs to process (faster at accessing data than RAM)

• fetch instruction from memory • decode instruction • execute instruction • process is repeated

causes the next instruction and any data involved to be fetched from main memory

The address might point to data or a CPU instruction.

dishwashers, microwaves, TVs

designed to run many applications

Small piece of memory inside the processor that can hold one instruction or address