CS 330 IT Summary Notes

Importance of Understanding IT

  • Better Decision Making: Understanding IT options and trade-offs leads to informed decisions.

    • Example: social engineering breaches can damage reputation, but employee training takes time.

  • Social Engineering: Hackers exploit psychology to trick individuals into revealing confidential information.

    • Example: USB drives labeled deceptively to contain malware.

Basic Hardware Components

  1. Processor (CPU): Manipulates data including symbols, characters, and numbers.

  2. Main Memory (RAM): Temporarily stores data and program instructions during processing.

  3. Secondary Storage: Permanently stores data and programs, examples include SSDs, HDDs, and USB drives.

  4. Input Devices: Convert external data into electronic form (e.g., keyboard, mouse).

  5. Output Devices: Convert electronic data to a format understood by humans (e.g., monitor, printer).

  6. Communication Devices: Connect computer to networks (e.g., network interface card).

Data Capacity Measurement

  • Units: KB, MB, GB, TB.

    • Lower case (b) : bits, Upper case (B): bytes (8 bits = 1 byte).

  • Power Representation:

    • Common prefixes: K, M, G, T (can refer to 1,024 or 1,000 based on context).

Processor Architectures

  • Word Size: 32-bit vs 64-bit architectures affect the parallel data processing capacity of a processor.

  • Backwards Compatibility: 64-bit systems retain functionality for applications designed for 32-bit processors.

Types of Processors

  • Efficiency vs Speed:

    • Efficiency: Used in mobile devices, designed for long battery life.

    • Speed: Used in desktops and servers, often need cooling systems.

Multi-core Processors

  • More cores allow parallel task execution, enhancing performance.

Processor Performance Measures

  • Clock Speed, Core Count, Word Size, and Bus Speed are key metrics.

Measuring Time

  • Units include milliseconds (ms), microseconds (µs), nanoseconds (ns), and picoseconds (ps).

Storage Devices Overview

  • Varieties include RAM and SSDs (both fast, volatile) and HHDs (slower, non-volatile).

Memory Hierarchy

  • Faster and more expensive memory types include registers and caches, with secondary storage being slower.

Secondary Storage Fundamentals

  • Data Access Method: Data needs to be loaded into RAM from slower secondary storage before processing.

Hard Drive Mechanics

  • Hard drives contain platters that spin, with read/write heads positioning to access data locations.

Reliability Measures in Storage

  • Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) estimates durability.

Data Storage Technologies: SSDs vs HDDs

  • SSDs - Faster access, more expensive, no moving parts.

  • HDDs - Slower, cheaper, mechanical components.

IT Infrastructure Definitions

  • IT Infrastructure: Shared resources for applications, including hardware and software.