AsAbove | The Quality Directory
Article DetailsHardware vs. Software |
| Date Added: August 24, 2009 12:12:49 PM |
| Author: Steven |
| Category: Reference: FAQs |
| In the XXI century the computer is believed to be the most advanced machine used worldwide. It is helpful in every sphere of life. It is vital in medicine, aviation, science and technology, finance etc. We power it up to contact our friends and relatives, to get data we need quickly, to make friends, to get acquainted with other ways of life, to be informed about home and foreign affairs and so on and so forth. Hence, the computer plays a very important function in our everyday life. Since it is able to perform a lot of functions simultaneously, it has a very sophisticated system. Two major words are commonly used when the computer is talked about: hardware and software. Hardware contains practically all devices on the computer, inclusive of the motherboard with the central processing unit, the power supply, the video display controller, the removable media devices (floppy disk, CD-ROM Drive/Writer, DVD-ROM Drive/Writer), the internal storing devices (for instance, hard disc), the sound card, the external constituents of a computer system (input and output devices). Hardware is something you can see and touch, as the hardware devices exist in the physical world. To make the hardware devices work as a complete unit a software is required to manage the work of the devices. Unlike hardware, software has no physical form and includes programs, data, protocols etc. Software is usually stored on the hard disk and is invoked by the OS to perform certain tasks. Software drivers are computer programs which are designed to interact with the hardware devices. A driver typically communicates with a hardware device with the help of the computer bus or communications subsystem to which hardware is connected. When a calling program invokes a set of instructions in the driver, the driver gives orders to the device. When the device sends back data to the driver, it invokes routines in the calling program. In general, the driver is intended for facilitation of programming by operating as an abstraction layer between a hardware device and an application or the operating system that uses it. Hence, it is dependent on hardware and is operating system-specific. The notions software and firmware are closely related and can be interchangeable in certain cases. In fact, firmware is a specific type of software that is typically involved with basic operations in a hardware device without which a device is unable to work. To conclude, hardware and software make up a whole and, so, cannot function on their own. |
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