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Any transfer of information to or from the CPU/memory combo, for example by reading data from a disk drive, is considered I/O. [1] The CPU and its supporting circuitry may provide memory-mapped I/O that is used in low-level computer programming, such as in the implementation of device drivers, or may provide access to I/O channels.
A network interface controller (NIC) is computer hardware that connects the computer to the network media and has the ability to process low-level network information. For example, the NIC may have a connector for plugging in a cable, or an aerial for wireless transmission and reception, and the associated circuitry.
The IBM PC took a more conventional approach, their adaptor card could support up to four drives; on the PC direct memory access (DMA) to the drives was performed using DMA channel 2 and IRQ 6. The diagram below shows a conventional floppy disk controller which communicates with the CPU via an Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus or similar ...
In practice, CPUs in personal computers are usually also connected, through the motherboard, to a main memory bank, hard drive or other permanent storage, and peripherals, such as a keyboard and mouse. Graphics processing units (GPUs) are present in many computers and designed to efficiently perform computer graphics operations, including ...
For example, the path C:\WINDOWS represents a directory WINDOWS on the partition represented by the letter C. Drive C: is most commonly used for the primary hard disk drive partition, on which Windows is usually installed and from which it boots. This "tradition" has become so firmly ingrained that bugs exist in many applications which make ...
An example of primary storage. 15 GB PATA hard disk drive (HDD) from 1999. When connected to a computer it serves as secondary storage. 160 GB SDLT tape cartridge, an example of off-line storage. When used within a robotic tape library , it is classified as tertiary storage instead.
A CPU cache [71] is a hardware cache used by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer to reduce the average cost (time or energy) to access data from the main memory. A cache is a smaller, faster memory, closer to a processor core , which stores copies of the data from frequently used main memory locations .
To perform useful functions, processes need access to the peripherals connected to the computer, which are controlled by the kernel through device drivers. A device driver is a computer program encapsulating, monitoring and controlling a hardware device (via its Hardware/Software Interface (HSI)) on behalf of the OS. It provides the operating ...