How do computers work?

Computers are basically glorified adders and subtracters. They work based on the binary base system. Binary numbers are indecently useful in representing an on and off state (1 and 0) in an electronic based system.

The key to a computer’s ability to do something useful is the presence of the following parts:

• Storage
• One or more Processors (CPU’s)
• Some output mechanism (screen, printer)
• Input (keyboard, mouse)

The computer’s processor is just one of several in today’s computer. The main processor (eg: Intel Core Duo), co-ordinates most of what is happening by way of instructions that we give it. For example, we can use the keyboard to type the instructions to ask the processor to add two numbers together, then write it to the output (screen). By stringing together lots of instructions (and there are many), you can do anything that you can think of. When we string together all these instructions, that’s called a “program”, and we can save it in our storage (disk, RAM) for later re-use.

Today’s computers are built off the knowledge of basic things learned before. For instance, the instructions that are used to sort a list of names in alphabetical order were developed decades ago, but are still in use today. By re-using these “algorithms”, computers will get more and more advanced each year.