Taking care of your own PC
Our readers have often written in with technical questions related to their computers and troubleshooting the daily problems they encounter. So instead of solving each of these problems individually, I decided to empower you with the knowledge that will enable you to troubleshoot your software and hardware problems on your own (and maybe help your friends as well... and show off a bit!)

So from this week, I will feature a series of articles that will help you gain a better understanding as to how your computer (and almost all other computers like it) work and how they are capable of doing what they do. So the next time you sit in front of your computer, you will actually be its boss in every sense of the word.

In the course of this discussion, we will initially focus on the hardware and leave the software operations to be discussed at the end, but hold on, we will talk about networks too, and all in plain English - no unnecessary jargon - I promise! (because I remember that there are some of you who are ‘allergic to computers’).

I must add a word of caution though. As much as it is a good thing to learn by experimenting with your machine, it is also best that you remember that your machine may have a warranty that has not expired yet.

Too much experimentation may result in your breaking the warranty agreement, so if your machine has a problem, it is best that you take it to an expert or the agent who gave you the warranty, before taking matters into your hands.

What happens inside your computer?
• Think of this as a great drama, which will unfold itself in the coming weeks. But first I must introduce the characters.

The Micro Processor — a.k.a Silicon Brain
We will start off our dive into the depths of the world of silicon (plastic and other junk) by exploring the brain of the computer - the Microprocessor.

A computer invariably has many ‘microprocessors’ for carrying out various specialised functions and at the very basic level, they all work under the same principle, in much the same way. But here, we will discuss only the workings of the CPU or the Central Processing Unit which controls the main operations of the computer and handles the bulk of the most crucial processing functions. We will talk about the other microprocessors in your machine at the appropriate time when we discuss the video and sound cards etc.

A microprocessor is a single unit or device that is capable of performing a wide range of computational tasks. The first microprocessor was the Intel 4004 which came out of the production line in 1971. It was not a very powerful computer as it could only add and subtract even then only 4 bit numbers at a time. But its significance lay in the fact that it was the first device which had all the functional parts of data processing integrated into one unit and thus gave birth to the concept of a single integrated processing unit.

But it was not until the 8 bit Intel 8080 which came out in 1974, that microprocessors made it into mainstream computing. This paved the way for the Intel 8088 which became very popular when it came out of Intel Corp in 1979 and into the popular IBM PCs by 1982, gaining the popularity that it still enjoys today. It is only through the 8088 that the Intel 80286, 80386, 80486 and then the Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium III and Pentium 4s evolved. Today a Pentium 4 is capable of executing the same instructions (and many more) that the first 8088 could but about 5000 times faster!

The CPU consists of a few integrated components. I say ‘a few’ because the actual number may vary, but they all constitute an Arithmetic/Logic Unit (ALU), a Control Unit (CU) and Memory.

What does the CPU do?
The CPU on the most basic level can perform three fundamental actions. They are;

• The ALU (Arithmetic/Logic Unit) can perform mathematical operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Modern microprocessors also contain sophisticated floating point processors that can perform extremely complicated operations on large floating point numbers.
• It can move data from one memory location to another.
• The processor also can make decisions (compare two numbers and determine whether they are equal, less than or larger than each other) and jump to a new set of instructions based on those decisions.

What to look for in a Processor
Here are a few details that you should look into the next time you decide to buy one.
The general perception is that the higher the clock speed, the smaller the microprocessor and the more transistors it has, the faster it will be. This is not quite accurate but the general idea is right.

When I talk about how small the chip is, I am talking about the width of the smallest bits of its wiring which is measured in microns - and if you are wondering how ‘long’ a micron is, a human hair is 100 microns wide and the wires that connect the millions of transistors in a modern microprocessor is about 0.18 microns thick!

Modern computers have about 40 to 45 million transistors printed on them but this still doesn’t portray a clear picture about how powerful it is. Then there is something called the data width. Technically it is the length (number of digits) of the largest binary number the processor can take in at a time.

All you need to know is that, the larger the data width (it is also called the ‘word size’ of the processor) the more powerful your processor will be. Even though this does not directly affect the speed of the processor, it will enable the computer to carry out a larger number of discrete operations and in a sense increase the ‘vocabulary of the machine’ and help it to communicate more efficiently. As I mentioned earlier, the Intel 4004 had a data width of only 4 bits but the latest CPUs are capable of ‘speaking in a sophisticated 64 bit language’.

Then there is the MIPS rating. You need not panic here because MIPS simply mean how many ‘millions of instructions per second’ it could process. This is a better indicator of the computers’ performance and ability though not a perfect one. The 8088 had a clock speed of 5 MHz and a MIPS rating of 0.33 which roughly translated to one instruction being completed every 15 clock pulses. Modern microprocessors usually execute two instructions per clock cycle because of new technologies such as ‘pipelining’ which we will discuss next week together with different computer architectures, a word about assembly language and of course, the different brands of microprocessors available in the market today.

Please do write in with your ideas to Technopage and share your views with us so that we will be able to cater to your level of understanding as this series of articles continue.

Attention - graphic designers
I read your page every week and I think it’s very useful so first of all, congrats on a great page. I just wanted to recommend a great forum for all the aspiring graphic designers around.

The URL is:
http://www.graphic-forums.com
It is a wonderful place to learn as everybody there is very helpful. Most of them are experts in the industry and there are also quite a few prominent people there.
- Housni Yakoob

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