What is the Hardware and Software 2021. |Linker, Loader, Translator.|

INTRODUCTION

A computer is an electronic device which helps to solve user problems. A computer is basically made up of two essential components that are hardware and software or you can say a computer is a combination of hardware and software.

Computer system is designed to solve user problems when both the components like hardware and software work together. A computer takes data from the user by hardware, then software processes it and then outputs the result when required. In this way, computers work and try to solve user problems.

But today we discussed hardware and software and also its types.

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Table of Content

1. What is Hardware

2. Hardware and its types

3. Software and its types

4. What is system software and types of system softwares?

5. Operating system

6. Translator

7. Linker

8. Loader

9. Application software

 

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What is the Hardware and Software and its types?

Hardware

Hardware refers to the tools and machinery or any physical component which we can see or touch is known as hardware. The hardware of a computer consists of various electronic, electro-mechanical and electromagnetic devices along with interfacing buses connecting them.

 

Hardware devices are physical devices that include the central processing unit, mouse, keyboard, printer, monitor, speaker, scanner and some other components. The primary work of hardware is to take commands from users and give them a desired output. 

Types of Hardware

Hardware is categorized on the basis of their primary work. There are primarily 4 types of hardware.

    1. Input device - Keyboard, Mouse, Scanner, Microphone, etc.

    2. processing device - Processor, RAM, ROM, Motherboard, etc.

    3. Output device - Monitor, Printer, Speaker, etc.

    4. Secondary storage device- Hard disk, Solid state disk, etc.

- . . . -

Software

On the other hand, software consists of a set of instructions, commands, programs etc that may help to perform a specific task. Software helps bare machinery to easily operate and fulfill our objectives. Software is a program or code that tells a hardware device what to do.

It is a program that is designed to control hardware. Hardware needs an operator who can operate hardware and that is what software does. Without software, hardware can’t do anything on its own. If the hardware is the body, then the software is the soul of a system.

Types of Software

Depending upon the type of the work a software is required to perform. It can be classified into:

1. System Software

2. Application Software

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System Software

System software is software that closely interacts with the hardware of a computer. These software depend upon the architecture of the underlying computer. They are responsible for controlling the resources of the system and perform other activities related to the system.

It basically controls peripherals devices such as keyboard, mouse and storage devices. This software runs in the background and maintains all necessary functions in computers. There are different kind of system softwares such as:-

    1. Operating system

    2. Translator

    3. Linker

    4. Loader

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Operating System

Operating system is a system which acts as an interface between the user and the bare hardware. To put it simply, the operating system manages all the resources of a computer. It also interprets all the commands that it receives from the user to the underlying hardware. The major functions of an operating system are:

    • Process and processor (CPU) management

    • Memory management

    • Device management

    • File management

The operating systems currently used are Linux, Windows 10, UNIX, mac-OS etc. Today’s operating systems come with a smart graphic user interface (GUI) that is easy to operate. It offers several utilities such as calculators, text editors, scanning software, drawing tools and image editing tools.

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Translator

Translator covers a class of system software which translates a program written in one programming language into another. The source language is either a high level programming convert into the target language in almost all cases is machine language which is essentially in binary (1’s and 0’s) a language understood by the computer. 

Translators are system software because they need a thorough understanding of the architectural configuration of the underlying hardware. There are basically two types of translators

1. Compiler
2. Assembler

 

Compiler:- Compilers are the system software that translate a program written in high level language (HLL) into machine language (LLL). C, C++, Java, etc are examples of HLL.

 Assembler:- Assembler translates a program written in assembly language into machine language. The difference between assembly and machine language is that, assembly language uses mnemonics such as  ADD, SUB, etc; whereas machine language uses the binary code (0 & 1).

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Linker

 The linker links together the object codes belonging to all the functions of a program and forms an executable code. This executable code may be stored in the secondary memory and can be loaded into the main memory and when required for executions.

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Loader

The loader is a system software that loads a program to be executed from the secondary memory into the designated area of the main memory. Modern day operating systems have a loader incorporated within them.

Absolute loaders, relocated loaders, direct linking loaders are few forms of loader. The most special loader is the Bootstrap loader. The boot strap loader quickly loads the operating system that is stored in hard disk into RAM immediately after the computer is switched on. The operating system then take control of the computer.

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Application software

Application software are ones that are meant to perform a specific activity and aid users in various ways. These software are specially designed to achieve a specific desired result. These types of software are not part of system software, you want to download these types of software from other external sources.

 

Word processing softwares, image editing, spreadsheet packages, database softwares and accounting software are some examples of application software. Each of these has been designed to serve a special purpose.

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