Active Vocabulary

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 447.

diary [‘daɪǝrɪ] - ежедневник portable - портативный

fail - повреждаться power [‘pauǝ] - мощность

laptop - компьютер-«наколенник» set - набор

mainframe - большой компьютер single - один, единственный

multi-tasking - параллельная обработка uninterruptible power supply – бесперебой-

multi-user - коллективного пользования ное электропитание

notebook - компьютер-«планшетник» workstation - автоматизированное

personal digital assistant - персональный рабочее место

цифровой помощник

Text 2.2. Read the text and label the diagram of a computer system using the terms from the text.

The processor e.g. Pentium, is the most important part of the computer. It processes the data and controls the computer. Powerful computers used as servers often have more than one processor. There are two main types of memory:

a RAM (random access memory) holds the program instructions and the data that is being used by the processor.

b ROM (read only memory) holds the program instructions and settings required to start up the computer.

The combination of the processor and memory is sometimes referred to as the CPU (central processing unit), although sometimes the processor itself is referred to as the CPU. The other parts connected to the CPU are known as peripherals. These can include input devices, output devices, storage devices and communications devices. Input devices include: keyboards, scanners, barcode readers, digital cameras, microphones and video cameras e.g. webcams (small digital video cameras used on the Web). Output devices include: monitors (VDU display screens), printers, plotters, loudspeakers, headphones. Storage devices include: flash-cards, hard disks, CD-ROMs, CD-R disks, CD-RW disks, DVDs and MO disks. A common communications device is a modem (a modulator/demodulator used for converting digital signals to analogue signals and vice versa to allow a computer to be connected to the ordinary telephone system).

A set of connectors used for carrying signals between the different parts of a computer is known as a bus. Data is transferred constantly between the processor and memory along the system bus. Each part of memory has its own memory address and the processor determines where processed data is stored by sending an address signal along an address bus and data along a data bus. This is synchronized by an electronic clock in the CPU that determines the operating speed of the processor. Transferring data between the processor and RAM can slow up the computer; therefore, some very expensive, extremely fast memory is usually used as a cache to hold the most frequently used data.