Text 8. Input, Process, Store, Output

There are four steps that any computer uses in doing its job. These are (1) inputting of data into the computer, (2) processing of the data that has been input, (3) storage of data, and (4) production of some kind of useful output.

In business computers, this four-step process is very easy to see. In order to produce a bill for a customer, we would have to input the information about what the customer bought. Once all of this infor­mation had been input, the computer would process this information and would print the information for the customer’s bill. Throughout this cycle, the computer would be storing (1) the data that had been input, (2) the data produced during intermediate processing steps, and (3) the data being printed out. Apart from processing data, com­puter systems are being increasingly used to store data; such storage has the advantage of allowing data to be rapidly retrieved.

In manufacturing, computers are used to control robots. If you think about it, any robot has to use some sort of a computer as the basis for its “intelligence". If we were to build a robot to be used in the assembling of automobiles, and if our robot had the specific task of mounting wheels on the car, the instructions for this process would be input into the computer. In addition, the robot would still have to be able to determine where the car and the wheel were. Various types of sensors, such as a television camera, would enable the robot to “see” the position of the wheel and the car. In this case, we would not have to type information into a computer for the robot to act. We do have to have some means of getting the data into the computer, like a television camera. If we were to build this robot correctly, it would use the television camera to tell where the car was, where the wheel was, and even where the lug nuts were. The television camera would be the input. The process would be the calculations required to deter­mine how to get the wheel on the car, and the output would be the robot’s response to these calculations: mounting the wheel on the car, putting on and then tightening the lug nuts, and checking to see if the tire were properly mounted. The basic steps — input, store, process, and output — would be taking place with our robot even though no data was typed into the robot’s computer.

Notes

TEXTS (13) 1

(Радіотехніка і комп’ютерна 1

техніка) 1

АРІЙ 1

Radio Engineering 4

Text 1. Electronics 4

Text 2. Electron Emission 4

Text 5. Reception of Radio Signals 7

Text 6. Radio Receivers (I) 8

Text 8. Oscillators 8

Text 11. Detection 9

Text 13. Functions of Vacuum Tubes 10

Text 14. Basic Tube Types 11

Text 22. Bearing 13

Text 23. Transistors, the Basic Mechanism 13

Text 25. Transistor Radio Frequency Amplifiers 15

Text 1. The Computer 15

Text 2. Using the Computer 16

Text 3. Peripheral Equipment 16

Text 4. Computers on Wheels 17

Text 5. Programming a Computer 18

Text 6. The Robot’s Nervous System 19

Text 7. Menu System 19

Text 8. Input, Process, Store, Output 20

Text 10. Memory 22

Text 11. Automatic Translator 23

Text 12. Universal Electronic Computer 23

Text 13. What Is a Digital Computer? 24

Text 14. Digital Computers 24

Text 15. Analog Versus Digital Computers 25

Text 16. Age of Thinking Machines 27

Text 17. General- and Special-Purpose Computers 27

Text 18. Programming 28

Text 19. Types of Instructions 29

Text 20. Simple Hardware, Complicated Logic 30

Text 21. Machine Language and Language Structure 30

Text 23. Mechanical and Electronic Calculating Machines 32

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such storage has the advantage of allowing data to be rapidly retrieved

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