How does motherboard work
Hey linda,
Sorry for being late as i was having exams.
I hope you asked me about working of Computer and the role of motherboard in it. First i will explain about each individual part of motherboard and then will tell you how they are working all together to perform your tasks as simple as possible..
Actually motherboards are Circuits Printed or Embedded on a board so as to connect many other components like processor, RAM, BIOS, Hard Disk and other disk drives. They provide expansion slots and connectors to connect other devices so that you can increase your computer's performance and capabilities.
Motherboards provide connections between these devices and help to exchange data and information in a controlled and efficient way.
Simply we can say that all Motherboards usually consist of the following main components.
1. CPU Slot to hold Processor, which does all the calculations given in the computer per a clock pulse. It's like a million instructions per second or micro seconds or something like that. These are rough values and accurate values differ from processor to processor.
(CPU->Central Processing Unit)
2. Memory Controller: Controls the usage of memory while performing calculations, comparisons and other operations.
By the way There are two types of memories available on the computer which are connected to our motherboard.
Primary memory: These are the most important memories as they are needed for the calculations, comparisons and performance etc. Example: RAM and ROM.
Secondary Memory: These are used to store the results of calculations permanently ( or till you need it) for further reference.
3. Input-Output Unit (I-O Unit): The input and output units help us to connect and give instructions to our computer through input devices and read the output or result of the calculations done with inputted values through output devices. Basic Input Devices are Keyboard, Mouse, Scanner etc. while basic output devices are Monitor, Printer, Speaker etc.
Now with all these slots and connectors, we will now look into it's working.
In computer, SMPS distributes power to all the components inside your CPU CABINET. So, When AC mains is given, SMPS distributes it to the power supply unit of our motherboard and through that to our power button. This means that when ever power is given, motherboard will get power supply but won't switch ON until we press our power button.
Note: The start up procedure of a computer is always termed as Booting. The booting process starts once you power on the system and will continue till the Operating System is loaded into primary memory.
So, after you press our power button, ROM or Read Only Memory will immediately gets activated and instructions contained in it for System start up, Hardware and it's Fault Detection, Booting Up and Shutting Down Process will help the motherboard to identify it's processor, RAM, I-O units(Only Keyboard, Mouse and Display), and some memory devices in which the Operating System (OS) is located. All these devices will contain a coded address by which it is targeted and addressed.
After identifying, it checks and detects any hardware faults. The faults detected may either be shown via output devices or a buzzer alarm( Alarm is also there within the motherboard). And if no fault is detected , it continues the booting process. The next step of booting process is to acquire the physical address of location where OS is located. It then acquire and extract data from the location of the device and load it's files into RAM. RAM is just like a waiting list or queue in which all the process which are executing, to be executed next are stored till the process is completed. So, the data extracted from the location (as told above) which is now stored in RAM will contain some instructions for the processor to do. These instructions may include loading of other files from other locations, starting display units, showing some other error messages. So, these instructions are carried out by processor and loads other OS files like a chain function. So, it goes on executing other process and tasks till the computer is switched off.
Thus for each process you call on your computer(like a game or a simple calculator program or anything), it first loads all the necessary files into RAM, accepts necessary instructions from input devices, executes all the instructions in it using processor and displays the result through output devices and this goes on till you exit that program.
Also, processor also has some units like Arithmetic Logic Unit, Control Unit , Cache etc. Instructions are executed according to their type (whether it is arithmetic or any other type) and use Cache as their temporary memory for calculations. While Cache is used to store temporary results of the active calculations, RAM stores the list of processes executing and to be executed ( as told above).
So, as told above, Motherboard provide connections between processors, RAM, ROM,I-O Devices, USB, Network Adapters, Graphic Devices etc.
Thank you for asking me a direct question.If you want to know more detailed working like what are the instructions given to varies devices like Processors and RAM, how are they given, how instructions in ROM are embedded etc, feel free to ask me. Once again sorry for being late.
Aspire
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Intel® Core™ i3 Processor
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