The term hardware covers all of those parts of a computer that are tangible (a thing that is perceptible by touch) physical objects.
Monitors, keyboards, printers, mouse, circuits, computer chips, graphic cards, sound cards, memory (RAM), motherboard, displays, power supplies, cables, etc are all examples of hardware.
A general purpose computer has 4 main components :
- Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU)
- Control Unit (CU)
- Memory
- Input and Output Devices (collectively termed I/O)
These parts are interconnected by buses (communication system that transfers data between components within a computer or between computers), often made of groups of wires.
Inside each of these parts are thousands to trillions of small electrical circuits which can be turned on or off by the help of an electronic switch.
Each circuit represents a bit (binary digit) of information so that when the circuit is on it represents a "1", and when off it represents a "0" (in positive logic representation).
The circuits are arranged in logic gates (AND gate, OR gate, XOR gate etc) so that one or more of the circuits may control the state of one or more of the other circuits.
