Hardware Meaning And What Is Processing Hardware

Hardware Meaning

Table of Contents

What is Hardware:

Hardware is the physical part of a computer or computer system. It remains made up of electrical, electronic, electromechanical, and mechanical components, such as cable and light circuits, boards, memories, hard drives, peripheral devices, and any other physical state material necessary to make the equipment work.

The term hardware comes from English. It means hard parts, and its use has been adopted in the Spanish language without translation, being used to refer to the material components that make up a piece of computer equipment.

The hardware also refers to the physical part of various kinds, such as household appliances, cars, smartphones, tablets, cameras, electronic equipment, or mechanical parts.

Hardware Evolution

From the appearance of the first computing machines in the 1940s to the present, hardware creation has evolved to adapt to new technologies and users. From this series of changes, four generations of hardware are distinguished:

First-generation of hardware (1945-1956): use of vacuum tubes in calculating machines.
The second generation of hardware (1957-1963): vacuum tubes remained replaced by transistors.
The third generation of hardware (1964-present): the creation of components based on integrated circuits printed on a silicon chip.
The fourth generation of hardware (future): all hardware made with new materials and formats other than silicon and are still in the research, design, development, or implementation phase.

Hardware Classification

The hardware remains classified into six categories based on the performance of its components.

Processing Hardware

It corresponds to the Central Processing Unit or CPU, the logical operations center of the computer, where the tasks necessary for the operation of the rest of the components are interpreted and executed.

Storage Hardware

As its name indicates, it refers to all the components whose function is to protect the information to access it at any time. The main device, in this case, is RAM ( Random Access Memory ), but it remains also made up of secondary memories, such as hard drives or SSD or USB memories.

Graphic Hardware

It is mainly composed of graphics cards that have their memory and CPU and are responsible for interpreting and executing the signals dedicated to constructing images. This function does not fall on the CPU has to do with efficiency since by releasing these functions to the main memory, the system works optimally.

Peripheral Devices

It is all the hardware that allows information to enter the computer or go outside. They remain subdivided into three categories.

Input peripherals allow data access to the computer—for example, keyboard, microphone, webcam, etc.
Output peripherals: through them, the user can extract the information, such as scanners, printers, consoles, and speakers.
Input and output or mixed peripherals: they are capable of entering or extracting information. Touchscreens fall into this category, as do DVD or BlueRay players and flash drives. The latter are essentially secondary memories but remain used as mixed peripherals.

Hardware and Software

For the correct functioning of the hardware, the software remains also needed. Which is the logical part of computing and is not tangible. It is there where all the instructions or tasks that an electronic system performs remain encoded. The software includes everything from the operating system to desktop applications that allow you to execute specific tasks. Such as the text or image editor.

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