Computer Science Basics

Computing De-mystified.

How computers work ?



To understand how business derive value from digital technology, we first need to understand computing in general and then drill down into how different types of digital technologies can solve different types of problems.

The term digital refers to the process of computing, which involves processing information numerically. All that we experience in the digital world is derived from the manipulation of numbers, and this manipulation is done on computers – some extremely small, others extremely big.

The core model of computing is as follows: input - process - output, with the process phase involving the transfer of data in an out of memory.

Figure 2. Computing model


Computing Scales


Computers come in a vast range of capacities and sizes. At one end of the spectrum we have embedded devices based on Systems on a Chip (SOC). These kinds of computers are often found in consumer products such as washing machines, drones or cars. At the opposite end of the spectrum are supercomputers which are used for running massive mathematical models for systems such as the weather or climate change. 

Figure 3. Computing Power Scale


Computing power is measured in FLOPS (Floating Point Per Second), or MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second).

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