CSE013

Introduction
To
Information
Technology
University Requirements
Compulsory Course
2 Cr
Module 1
Computer hardware
 The hardware is any materialized
media or fabric that the information
technology system uses to perform a
Primary certain task

hardware
components In modern days
computing, there are
Input units
Storage units
4 types of hardware Processing units
units Output units
 Any device that you use to pass data
to the computer, is an input unit

Input units for computers work in a

Input units very similar way to human senses for
humans and each of input units
targets a human sense accordingly

So, using human senses as guide,

can you list examples of input
units that you use in everyday
computing ?
 Example of input units

Keyboard Mouse Scanner Digital Camera Microphone

Storage units

After collecting data using input devices, if the computer didn’t save it somehow
somewhere, it would be a waste of time and resources

That’s where the storage units come into playStorage devices act as the home for
the data which input devices collected earlier
Storage devices act as the home for the data which input devices collected earlier
Storage units

Storage devices
can be categorized
using various
aspects like

Portability Capacity Speed Availability Physical form

is the device small, medium or slow, medium or Hight, Medium or Magnetic, Optical,
portable or fixed large fast Low Electronic
The history and evolution of storage units
The history and evolution of storage devices
Logical storage units

Before we dig deeper, lets first get to know how data is stored
digitally on any media
• All data stored on storage media – whether that’s hard disk drives (HDDs), solid state drives
(SSDs), external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards etc – can be converted to a string
of bits, otherwise known as binary digits. These binary digits have a value of 1 or 0, and the
strings can make up photos, documents, audio and video. A byte is the most common unit
of storage and is equal to 8 bits.

• All data in a computer is stored as a number. For example, letters become numbers; the
Complete Works of Shakespeare is around 1250 pages in print, contains 40 million bits,
with one byte per letter, totalling five megabytes (5MB). Photographs are converted to a set
of numbers that indicate the location, colour and brightness of each pixel. Whereas
convention numbers use ten digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9), binary numbers use two digits
to represent all possible values. The conventions numbers 0-8 translate into binary numbers
as: 0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111 and 1000. With binary numbers, any value can be stored
as a series of items which are either true (1) or false (0).
 Unit Shortened Capacity

Bit b 1 or 0 (on or off)

Byte B 8 bits

Kilobyte KB 1024 bytes

Megabyte MB 1024 kilobytes

Logical Gigabyte GB 1024 megabytes

storage units Terabyte

Petabyte
TB

PB
1024 gigabytes

1024 terabytes

Exabyte EB 1024 petabytes

Zettabyte ZB 1024 exabytes

Yottabyte YB 1024 zettabytes

The history and evolution
of storage devices

Magnetic storage media

The information retrieved and written onto a floppy disk is
controlled by the process of magnetic encoding. As the
read/write head passes over designated tracks of the floppy disk
it uses magnetic polarization to write information onto the disk,
and to retrieve this information. In the reading and storing of
data, the head uses the binary numbers 0 and 1 which correspond
to the north and south poles of a magnet. Being that these two
components (the read/write head and the floppy disk) are both
magnetized, the computer sends either a positive or negative
voltage to the head which encodes this into a series of 0's and 1's
corresponding to north and south. The opposite process is done
when the head is reading information. The head picks up a signal
from magnetized parts of the disk and the read/write head, and
sends the information to the computer, converting the charges to
binaries.
The history and evolution
of storage devices

Optical storage media

electronic storage medium that uses low-
power laser beams to record and retrieve digital (binary)
data. In optical-storage technology, a laser beam encodes
digital data onto an optical, or laser, disk in the form of tiny
pits arranged in a spiral track on the disk’s surface. A low-
power laser scanner is used to “read” these pits, with
variations in the intensity of reflected light from the pits
being converted into electric signals. This technology is
used in the compact disc, which records sound; in the CD-
ROM (compact disc read-only memory), which can store
text and images as well as sound; in WORM (write-once
read-many), a type of disk that can be written on once and
read any number of times; and in newer disks that are
totally rewritable.
 The history and evolution of storage devices

Hard drive is one of the most common storage device, as it

has best of both worlds regarding availability,
To overcome this limitation, USB
responsiveness and capacity, but it lacks portability as it is Portable hard drives were invented to
built inside the computer and removing it would require a provide a portable solution
technician or a hardware specialist.
The history and evolution of storage devices

A look inside a hard drive unit

The history and
evolution of
storage devices
• So, if standard hard
drives consists of
mechanical parts and
data platters, what
exactly are Solid state
drives (SSD) that are
very common in
nowadays computers,
and why it is getting
so popular ?
The history and
evolution of storage
devices

• Simply, although standard mechanical hard

drives provided average speed and
performance, but still the motor, magnetic
head and the movement of the platter, all
created latency that made most of the hard
drives data transfer rate sticks at maximum
speed of 600 MB/s.

• Nowadays computing needed more than

this, and because of the rapid advance of
other computer parts like processors and
various memory technologies, all of that
made the mechanical hard drives lack the
speed needed to accommodate that other
parts and created a bottleneck for the
overall computational power of the system
The history and evolution
of storage devices

• Thus, the need emerged to develop a solution that relies on no

mechanical parts, no motors, needles nor platters
• So in 1995, the first applicable and reliable SSD that were
based on flash-memory technology was invented by M-System
corporation, but due to its cost then, its usage was limited to
military and industry level.
• Later on and after the cost of the SSD dropped drastically in
2004, the first Solid-State Drive was sold commercially by
SanDisk corporation
• Current SSDs perform about 12 times faster than the fastest
HDD with almost 7GB/s data rate Vs. ~600 MB/s for HDDs
The history and
evolution of storage
devices

Sky is the limit, but Cloud ?!

Cloud Storage is a mode of
computer data storage in which
digital data is stored on servers
in off-site locations. The servers
are maintained by a third-party
provider who is responsible for
hosting, managing, and securing
data stored on its infrastructure.
To sum-up storage devices ☺
Device Portability Capacity Speed Availability Physical form

Floppy drive Poor 1.44 MB ~ 1MB/s Poor Magnetic

Compact Discs Medium 700 MB ~ 2 MB/s Medium Optical

DVD Medium 4.7-8.9 GB ~ 250 MB/s Medium Optical

Blu-Ray Medium 25-50 GB ~ 400 MB/s Medium Optical

Hard disk Poor 280 GB – 16 TB ~ 600 MB/s High Magnetic

Solid-State Drive Poor 120 GB – 4 TB ~ 7 GB/s High Electronic

USB Flash Drive High 4 GB – 2 TB ~ 200 MB/s High Electronic

Cloud Extreme ~ Unlimited Limited by your internet speed Extreme Cloud

Processing Units

Don’t get lost, you are here

Processing
Units
So, we have gone a long way by
capturing the input, then storing
it safely, now what ?
 Processing Units

• The computer has a processing unit that is

dedicated to this task, and luckily its name
is also the Processor or the Central
Processing Unit (CPU)
• Central processing unit (CPU), principal part of
any digital computer system, generally composed of
the main memory, control unit, and arithmetic-logic
unit. It constitutes the physical heart of the entire
computer system; to it is linked
various peripheral equipment,
including input/output devices and auxiliary storage
units. In modern computers, the CPU is contained
on an integrated circuit chip called a microprocessor.
 Processing Units

Physical parts of the processing components

Central Processing Unit Random Access Memory

Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU)
Control Unit (CU)
 Processing Units

Central Processing Unit Random Access Memory

• Arithmetic logic unit • Stores data that are currently
• Handles all the thinking being processed
• Performs the math in real-time • Extremely responsive and fast
in thousand parts of the second
• Volatile, meaning that in the
• Control unit case of power failure, all the
• Controls the computer system data store in it will be lost
devices and peripherals
Processing Units

How the computer processing power is

measured, and how it can be enhanced ?
• Although the RAM’s main job is to store
data, but due to the nature of the data it
stores and its urgent type, the more RAM
your system possess, the more
responsiveness you will get, the RAM size
is measured using the same logical units
as any other storage unit, in Bytes and its
multiplications, in nowa days computing,
RAM technologies and capacities has
increased rapidly so most of the modern
personal computers now has 8 GB up to
64 GB of RAM
Processing Units
How the computer processing power is
measured, and how it can be enhanced ?
• On the other hand, Processor speed is measured
in hertz (Hz) and refers to the number of cycles per
second that a CPU can execute. Modern
processors typically have speeds in the range of 1
GHz (gigahertz) to 3.8 GHz, with higher end
models being capable of even greater speeds.
• Thanks to Hyper-Threading, modern day
computing, processor has Multi-Cores allows to
do multiple tasks efficiently in the same time as it
present itself to the hosting system as multiple
cores (or multiple processors)
Output Units
 Output Units

• If an input unit is used to get the data from you to the

computer, then output units are the devices that gets
the information out of the computer to you

• Can you list some of the output devices ?

(Hint, just reverse each input device task and think of the
device that apply that task)
Output Units

Monitor Printer Speaker Plotter

A real Tour inside a real PC
 • Keyboard
Input • Mouse
• Mic

• Magnetic
• Floppy drive
• Hard drive
• Optical
• CD
Storage • DVD
• Blu-Ray

To sum up • Electronic
• Flash
• SSD
• Cloud

• CPU
• ALU
Processing
• CU
• RAM

• Monitor
Output • Printer
• Speaker