When you look at your computer or your smart phone or your game station, what do you see? You see that it either works, or doesn’t work. However, wouldn’t you want to know how it works or why it works? How does a piece of plastic, combined with various metals and other material, transform into images and interactive buttons? Well, to help you learn more about the connection between hardware and software, I will explain the concept in simpler terms.

First off, a computer system, which exists in all three platforms (computer, smart phone, and game station), consists of six essential parts: CPU (Central Processing Unit), primary storage, secondary storage, input devices, output devices, and communication devices. The CPU is the brain of the computer processing information and controlling other parts of the system. The primary storage stores information and data during processing while secondary stage stores data that is not used in processing. Input and output devices are necessary for interacting with the system to give or receive instructions. Lastly, communication devices allow information to pass to and from communication networks through circuitry paths.

Now, the computer system accepts information based on bits, which are represented by either a 0 or a 1, otherwise known as binary digits. This is due to the fact that a switch can be “ON” or “OFF,” depending on the flow of electricity in a circuitry path. Therefore, all symbols, words, pictures, etc. are represented by a long “string,” a continuous ordering of zeros and ones, of binary digits. This is the machine’s language and it is how we are able to link software with hardware. For example, pictures are represented by a grid of pixels, with each pixel consisting of a number of bits that is stored to illustrate a whole picture.

Fortunately, you have endured the hardest part of learning about computers: learning the definitions. Now that you know about the basic computer components and how computers communicate, we can dive further into actual programming of hardware in the next blog. Stay tuned for Part 2 of “How Software and Hardware Work Together!”

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