Table of Contents
Hardware Definition
Hardware is the physical part of or computer system. It comprises electrical, electronic, electromechanical, and mechanical components, such as cable and light circuits, boards, memories, hard drives, peripheral devices, and any other material in a physical state necessary to make the equipment work.
The term hardware comes from English. It means complex parts and their use have been adopted in the Spanish language without translation, referring to the material components that make up computer equipment.
Nowadays, the it also refers to the physical part of various kinds of equipment, such as household appliances, cars, smartphones, tablets, cameras, electronic equipment, or mechanical parts.
Hardware evolution
From the first computing machines’ appearance in the 1940s to the present, its creation has evolved to adapt to new technologies and users. From this series of changes, four generations of it are distinguish:
First-generation hardware (1945-1956)It is used in vacuum tubes in calculating machines.
Transistors replaced the second generation of hardware (1957-1963) in vacuum tubes.
The third generation of hardware (1964-present) creates components based on integrated circuits printed on a silicon chip.
The fourth generation of hardware (future) all hardware made with new materials and formats other than silicon, still in the research, design, development, or implementation phase.
Hardware classification
It is classified into six categories based on the performance of its components.
1. Hardware Processing
- It corresponds to the Central Processing Unit, the computer’s logical operations center, where the tasks necessary for the rest of the components’ operation are interpreted and executed.
2. Storage hardware
- As its name indicates, it refers to all the components whose function is to protect the information so that it can be access at any time by the user.
- In this case, RAM’s primary device is made of secondary memories, such as hard drives or SSD or USB memories.
3. Graphic hardware
- It is mainly composed of graphics cards with their memory and CPU and are responsible for interpreting and executing the signals dedicated to constructing images.
- This function does not fall on the CPU has to do with efficiency since by releasing these functions to the main memory, the system works optimally.
4. Peripheral devices
- The hardware that allows information to go into the computer or go outside is divided into three categories.
- Firstly, Input peripherals allow data access to the computer—for example, keyboard, microphone, webcam, keyboard, etc.
- Secondly, Output peripherals through this, the user can extract the information, such as scanners, printers, consoles, and speakers.
- And also, Input and output or mixed peripherals: they can inflow or extract information. Touchscreens fall into this category, as do BlueRay players, flash drives, DVD, and BlueRay players.
- And also, The latter are essentially secondary memories but uses as mixed peripherals.
5. Hardware and software
- For the hardware’s functioning, the software also needs, which is the logical part of computing and is not tangible.
- It is there where all the instructions or tasks that encode an electronic system perform.
- The software includes everything from the operating system to desktop applications that allow you to carry out specific tasks, such as the text or image editor.
- And also, The combination of software and hardware is what allows the computer to work more accurately and efficiently.
6. SEO hardware
- SEO (search engine optimization) has also changed with the increasing development of it.
- Due to the enormous processing power of computers, for example, programs like Google Analytics or other tools used in the first place.
- About the optimization of websites, its requirements of the user play a significant role. Today, for example, the type of end device is much more differentiated than at the beginning of the 2000s.
- At that time, Internet access was mainly via desktop PCs at home. Today, a large number of end devices with different hardware uses to access the Internet.
- we no longer tied up to a stationary Internet but can surf on the go with smartphones and also tablets.
- A concrete consequence of its development is, for example, the responsive design that adapts to the respective output device. And also, Mobile optimization is also a direct consequence of the changed hardware requirements of users.
