Introduction to Computer Hardware Operations

Study Notes

A computer's memory is divided into tiny storage locations called bytes, each byte is further divided into eight smaller storage locations called bits.
A bit can represent one of two values depending on whether it's turned on or off, making it suitable for binary numbering system.
Characters, including letters and punctuation marks, are stored in computer memory as binary numbers.
Programs are usually stored on secondary storage devices like disk drives and are copied into main memory (RAM) each time they're executed by the CPU.
CPU is the central processing unit of a computer that runs programs by performing simple operations on pieces of data. It doesn't understand instructions written in human languages; instead, it uses machine language written in binary code.
Assembly language was created as an alternative to machine language, using short words called mnemonics instead of binary numbers for instructions.
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is an important coding scheme for representing characters in computer memory, defining codes for 128 characters including English letters and various punctuation marks.
Unicode is a more extensive encoding scheme that's compatible with ASCII and can represent characters of many world languages, surpassing ASCII's 128 character limit.
A program is a list of instructions that tells the CPU to perform specific operations, with each instruction being a command for the CPU.