Computer hardware From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Hardware comprises all of the physical parts of a computer, as distinguished from the data it contains or operates on, and the software that provides instructions for the hardware to accomplish tasks. The boundary between hardware and software is slightly blurry—firmware is software that is "built-in" to the hardware, but such firmware is usually the province of computer programmers and computer engineers in any case and not an issue that computer users need to concern themselves with.

A typical computer (personal computer, PC) contains in a desktop or tower case (chassis) the following parts:

System board/Motherboard which holds the CPU, Random Access Memory and other parts, and has slots for expansion cards

RAM (Random Access Memory)- for short term data-storage, so the computer doesn't have to fish through the hard drive to find something. More RAM can contibute to a faster PC

Buses: PCI bus, ISA bus, USB, AGP

power supply - a case that holds a transformer, voltage control and fan

storage controllers, of IDE, SCSI or other type, that control hard disk, floppy disk, CD-ROM and other drives; the controllers sit directly on the motherboard (on-board) or on expansion cards

video display controller that produces the output for the computer display

computer bus controllers (parallel, serial, USB, Firewire) to connect the computer to external peripheral devices such as printers or scanners

Some type of a removable media writer:

CD - the most common type of removable media, cheap but fragile: CD-ROM, CD-RW, CD-R

DVD: DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, DVD-R

Floppy disk

Internal storage - keeps data inside the computer for its later use.

Hard disk - for long-term storage of data.

Disk array controller

Sound card - translates signals from the system board into a language that the speakers can read, and has terminals to plug in speakers.

Networking - to connect the computer to the Internet and/or other computers

Modem - for dial-up connections

Network card - for DSL/Cable internet, and/or connecting to other computers.

Other peripherals

In addition, hardware can include external components of a computer system. The following are either standard or very common.

Input: Keyboard, Pointing devices (Mouse, Trackball )

Joystick, Gamepad, Image scanner, Webcam

Output: Printer, Speakers, Monitor

Networking: Modem, Network card

See also

Computer architecture, legacy system, Open hardware, optical computer, DNA computer,History of computing hardware, Origins of computer terms

External links

DebianWiki: Hardware (http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?Hardware)

Computer Hardware Directory @ dmoz (http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Hardware/)

Definition of hardware at eLook Computing Reference (http://www.elook.org/computing/hardware.htm)

Definition of Computer hardware @ Webopedia (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/H/hardware.html)

24. “Computer graphics” From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Computer graphics (CG) is the field of visual computing, where one utilizes computers both to generate visual images synthetically and to integrate or alter visual and spatial information sampled from the real world.

The first major advance in computer graphics was the development of the Sketchpad in 1962 by Ivan Sutherland.

This field can be divided into several areas: real-time 3D rendering (often used in video games), video capture and video creation rendering, special effects editing (often used for movies and television), image editing, and modeling (often used for engineering and medical purposes). Development in computer graphics was first fueled by academic interests and government sponsorship. However, as real-world applications of computer graphics (CG) in broadcast television and movies proved a viable alternative to more traditional special effects and animation techniques, commercial parties have increasingly funded advances in the field.

It is often thought that the first feature film to use computer graphics was 2001: A Space Odyssey, which attempted to show how computers would be much more graphical in the future. However, all the "computer graphic" effects in that film were hand-drawn animation, and the special effects sequences were produced entirely with conventional optical and model effects.

Perhaps the first use of computer graphics specifically to illustrate computer graphics was in Futureworld (1976), which included an animation of a human face and hand - produced by Ed Catmull and Fred Parke at the University of Utah.