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Hardware vs. Software
Date Added: August 22, 2009 07:37:18 AM
Author: Steven
Category: Reference: FAQs
In the XXI century the computer is believed to be the most technologically advanced device used all over the world. It is helpful in every sphere of life. It is of great importance in medicine, aviation, science and technology, finance and so on. We start it up to contact our relatives and friends, to find data we require fast, to meet new people, to explore the world around us, to be well-informed about home and foreign affairs and so on. So, we largely depend on the computer in our life. Since it can perform a lot of functions at the same time, it has a very sophisticated organization. Two basic words are commonly used when the computer is spoken about: hardware and software. Hardware contains practically all devices on the computer, such as the motherboard with the central processing unit, the power supply, the video display controller, the removable media devices (floppy disk, CD-ROM Drive/Writer, DVD-ROM Drive/Writer), the internal storage devices (for instance, hard disk), the sound card, the external elements of a computer system (input and output devices). Hardware is something tangible, since the hardware devices exist in the physical world. For the hardware devices to function together a software is required to control the work of the devices. In comparison with hardware, software is immaterial and contains programs, data, protocols etc. Software is typically stored on the hard disc and is invoked by the OS to perform certain functions. Software drivers are computer programs which are intended for interaction with the hardware devices. A driver typically communicates with a hardware device by means of the computer bus or communications subsystem to which hardware is linked. When a calling program invokes a routine in the driver, the driver issues commands to the device. Having obtained data from the device, the driver invokes routines in the calling program. Generally, the driver is aimed at simplifying programming by operating as an abstraction layer between a hardware device and an application or the OS that uses it. Therefore, it depends on hardware and is operating system-specific. The terms software and firmware have a lot in common and are interchangeable in some cases. In fact, firmware is a specific kind of software that is commonly involved with basic operations in a hardware device without which a device cannot work. Taking into consideration the above stated we can conclude that hardware and software make up a complete unit and, hence, cannot function separately.
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