Principles of Computer Hardware 4e

Computer technology pervades almost every aspect of our life: from the cars that we drive, to the mobile phones that we use to communicate; from the digital cameras that capture images of the world around us, to the laser printers that turn image into picture. Yet at the heart of these enabling technologies lie fundamental components and systems, without the understanding of which such technologies would never have been developed. "Principles of Computer Hardware" explores the fundamentals of computer structure, architecture, and programming that underpin the array of computerized technologies around which our lives are now built. The book opens with an introduction to the fundamental concepts upon which computers are constructed - gates, circuits, logic - and computer arithmetic, the 'language' through which computers communicate. It then reveals how computers are structured and how they operate, taking us step-wise from the instruction set architecture, the bringing together of instructions through assembly language programming, and on to the heart of the computer, the central processing unit.