Е. С. Закирова, П. А. Красавин Английский язык для технических вузов
READING Exercise 10. Read the text, try to focus on its essential facts and choose the most
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- COMPUTER LITERACY
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Exercise 10. Read the text, try to focus on its essential facts and choose the most suitable heading given below for each paragraph. 1) Hardware 2) CPU 3) Software 4) The Functional Units of the Computer 5) Input/Output Devices 6) Memory COMPUTER LITERACY A computer is one of the most important items society possesses today. Computers have deeply imbedded in our lives, so we can hardly imagine our life without them. But what is a computer? What are the main parts of this gadget? Let’s try to sort it out. As we know, all computer systems perform func- tions of inputting, storing, processing, controlling, and outputting. So, there should be units performing these functions. The functional units of a digital computer are: — storage or memory — to store information and make it available at the appropriate time; — arithmetic-logical unit (ALU) — to perform the calculations; — control unit (CU) — to control and coordinate data movements with- in the central processing unit (CPU), between the CPU and the other com- ponents of the computer system; — input/output unit (collectively termed I/O) — to insert data into a machine or to remove them from it for further consideration. Functional units of a computer Speaking more precisely, “computer” refers to the central processing unit together with the internal memory. The CU and ALU are collectively known as CPU. The CPU coordinates all the actions performed by various compo- 110 nents of the computer, by issuing commands to other parts of the system and by acting on responses. The memory, one of the basic components, is often called storage. It stores calculation programmes, calculation formulae, initial data, intermediate and final results. Generally, memory consists of two main parts called the primary, or internal memory (RAM), and the secondary, or external memory (ROM). The advantage of the primary memory is an extremely high speed. The sec- ondary memory in its turn has a comparatively low speed, but it can store a far greater amount of information than the primary memory. Now if we look at the computer, what can we see? The case, or chassis, houses the following units: motherboard holding the CPU and physically con- necting all the other main parts of the computer; HDD (hard disc drive, com- monly called “winchester” in the youth slang); and a power supply unit. The vis- ible units are physical components of a data processing system, or hardware. Relationship between 4 parts of the computer Not visible is the software. Software programmes are of two types: sys- tem software and application software. System software is the programmes designed to control the operation of a computer system. They do not solve specific problems. Application software is the programmes written to solve specific tasks. Output devices rendering information in the form of words, sounds, and pictures are a monitor, printers, speakers, etc. Input devices, enabling infor- 111 mation to pass into a computer are a keyboard, a mouse, scanners, digital cam- eras, sound cards, etc. жүктеу/скачать 4,38 Mb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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