general purpose computers

• A general purpose computer is a computer that is designed to be able to carry out many different tasks (applications):

  • access the internet
  • communicate via email and social media
  • design and build web pages
  • store and retrieve data
  • play videos and music

  Apart from PCs and laptops:

  • tablets
  • smartphones
  • games consoles
  • media systems in cars
• General purpose computers consist of hardware and software. Hardware is the physical components of the computer, such as the central processing unit (CPU), hard disk, monitor, keyboard and mouse. Software is the programs that run on a computer.
• • All general purpose computers follow the same basic model.
  • diagram: flow of data within computer
  • Data input, processed, either output / sent to secondary storage.
  • held in primary memory while being processed.
  • CPU receives instructions n data from input / memory.
  • theyre processed by CPU, results either sent to an output / transferred to secondary storage.
  • Input from input device eg keyboard, mouse, camera, scanner
  • Output to output device eg monitor, printer, speaker

  A) primary memory

  B) cpu

  C) secondary storage

  
• The purpose of the CPU

  The CPU is the most important hardware component in a computer. It has two main functions:

  • to process data and instructions
  • to control the rest of the computer system

  All programs and data processing are run in the CPU and all hardware components are, to some extent, controlled by it.