by Mike Stanley

Created on: June 25, 2009

Computer hardware is sometimes seen as mysterious by non technical people. Some find it hard to imagine just how those electrical pulses come together and give the computer a life of it's own. However, the same principles that drives animals and humans to do what they do, also drives computers. People use logic to determine what they should do next, and because humans build and program computers, these same concepts were used to control computer functions. It's the fundamentals of the universe. This logic is stored in the brain, and in the case of computers, the brain is called the central processing unit (CPU), or processor for short. While the circuitry for these processors may seem very complex, they still operate on the basic principles of logic. Every action these chips perform are a direct result of some input they received from somewhere else.

Just like humans, the brain needs to temporarily store the information to be processed. This short term memory in computers is called volatile memory, or random access memory (RAM). This memory only stores information while the computer is operating, and will lose its contents if power is lost. When programs are launched, a portion of the program is loaded into RAM so the processor has easier access to the program for processing. The faster the RAM, the more efficient the CPU can run the program, and the larger the RAM the more programs the processor can run at one time.

Some things need to be remembered for longer periods of time. The primary long term memory in a computer is usually a hard drive. The hard drive is used to store the programs and other information that will need to be run and used later on. Hard drives retain their contents after power is removed. The faster the hard drive the faster the programs can run and faster the information can be retrieved. Likewise, the larger the storage capacity, the more programs and information can be stored on the hard drive. Other forms of long term memory are optical drives such as CD and DVD drives. These offer a more permanent storage solution, and the discs take up less space. Newer forms of storage are thumb drives that can be plugged into a port on the computer and can serve as both short term or long term memory.

With all this input and processing, we need a way to display the output, and end results. For this we have monitors and graphics cards. A graphics card has on basic function, to provide the monitor with the information from the computer in a

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