TABLE OF CONTENTS A computer system is comprised of the five building blocks previously described, as well as additional peripheral support devices, which aid in data movement and processing. These basic building blocks are used to form the general processing, control, storage, and input and output units that make up modern computer systems. Devices typically are organized in a manner that supports the application processing for which the computer system is intended for example, if massive amounts of data need to be stored, then additional peripheral storage devices such as disks or tape units are required, along with their required controllers or data channels.
A computer system's architecture is constructed using basic building blocks, such as CPUs, memories, disks, I/O, and other devices as needed.
To better describe the variations within architectures we will discuss some details briefly for example, the arithmetic logic unit (ALU) and the control unit are merged together into a central processing unit or CPU. The CPU controls the flow of instructions and data in the computer system. Memories can be broken down into hierarchies based on nearness to the CPU and speed of access for example, cache memory is small, extremely fast memory used for instructions and data actively executing and being used by the CPU and usually resides on the same board or chip as the CPU. The primary memory is slower, but it is also cheaper and contains more memory locations. It is used to store data and instructions that will be used during the...
