Personal Computers: An Age of Information

    Personal computers have revolutionized the way we gather, interpret, share, and store information on a daily basis -- It's almost hard to imagine a life without them. In order to understand personal computers, we first must understand their components.     

    Personal computers are made up of a display, CPU, RAM, keyboard, and a hard drive, motherboard, among others. The display is the central information visual that illustrates the media or data at hand. The CPU, or Central Processing Unit, is the "brain" of a computer. According to the course lecture, it "processes the software instructions, which are stored in memory as digital data". RAM, or Random Access Memory, temporarily stores the necessary data and manages the demand on the CPU and is made of integrated circuit chips on silicon. 

    

    RAM allows for fast information access, but it can be volatile and lead to crashes if overloaded. It is rapidly overwritten with new information as the operator switches between various tasks. The hard drive is the storage component where data is housed long-term for permanent reference or use until deleted. They are a non-volatile storage consisting of hard platters with magnetic surfaces that hold digital data. Solid-State Drives (SSDs) function quickly like RAM but are non-volatile, and therefore are a major step in personal computing technology. The motherboard holds all of the primary integrated circuit chips and is built on a printed circuit board.

The keyboard is one of the most recognizable features on a personal computer, and it allows for the input of data from the user. They often carry several features alongside the alphabet that the user can use to convey their desired input.

More research has been done into how we can accelerate relational database operations using both CPU and a GPU (graphics) co-processor. Data is evolving and the number of existing data sources is vastly growing. One article declared that "Significant speed-ups at a small cost can be achieved by deploying co-processors such as GPUs. To this end, in we propose a new hybrid query processing technique that makes use of the capabilities of CPUs and GPUs." (Shehab)

Personal computers have revolutionized the modern human era and continue to develop into powerful machines with unweilding potential. 

1. Shehab, Esree. 2017 Accelerating relational database operations using both CPU and GPU co-processor. Computers and Electrical Engineering, Vol 57