Principle of Equivalence of Hardware and Software

What is the importance of the Principle of Equivalence of Hardware and Software? What is the stored program architecture of a computer? Describe with an example. Rationale This assessment task covers topic 1, and has been designed to ensure that you are engaging with the subject content on an early. Moreover, it seeks to assess your ability to:  be able to define and appropriately use computer systems terminologies;  be able to describe the concepts of data computer architecture and organisation; be able to describe the relationship between computer hardware and software and how they play role in designing a computer

A1. 

The principle of equivalence of software & hardware says that everything which could be achieved or completed via utilizing software could correspondingly be completed using hardware and vice versa. This is primarily fundamental in conniving the architecture of a computer. There exist possibly infinite ways to combine & assert software with hardware. Nevertheless having this opinion in one’s knowledge, a person could take the accurate strides by bearing in mind additional peripheral issues such as prices, swiftness & purpose, in order to regulate the most appropriate plans for finishing particular errands and therefore make the most of the performance of the computer. Occasionally all a person requires is a meek system to provide good performance rather than a complex program that may make the computer sluggish (Null and Lobur, 2006). A distinctly tasked computer could be created to carry out any assignment, for example budget analysis, data transfer, or creating a simple database. Consequently, programs could be inscribed in order to perform the tasks of computers designed for a specific purpose, for example the embedded systems present in a vehicle or an electronic appliance. In such epochs when a meek embedded system provides a considerably healthier performance to that compared of a complex computer program, also there are epochs where a program is far more preferable method. The Principal of Equivalence of Hardware & Software articulates to the person that he/she has an option. The acquaintance of computer architecture will assist in selecting the best option.

A2.

The stored-program computers are now a days called von Neumann systems that use the von Neumann architecture. The version of the stored-program machine architecture in the present world gratifies at the minimum the subsequent traits:

·         It includes of 3 hardware systems: A central processing unit (CPU) comprising of a control unit, an arithmetic logic unit (ALU), registers, and a program counter: a main memory system that stores the programs that regulate the computer’s operation and an I/O system.

·         Capability to perform successive instruction processing.

·         It includes a solitary trail, either logically or physically, amongst the main memory system & the control unit of the CPU, compelling interchange of instructions & execution cycles (Haigh, Priestley and Rope, 2014). This solitary trail is frequently denoted as the von Neumann bottleneck.