Demystifying Computer Hardware for Software Engineers
Demystifying Computer Hardware for Software Engineers Software engineers focus on code, APIs, and systems design. Understanding hardware helps you write faster, more reliable software and choose better tools. A practical view of CPU, memory, storage, and input/output makes the link between code and performance clearer. Understanding the Core Components The CPU is the brain. It brings instructions to life and uses caches to store hot data. More cores help parallel tasks, but software must be designed to run in parallel. RAM stores data for active programs; its speed and size affect how well you can work with big data sets. Storage is slower, yet non-volatile; SSDs (especially NVMe) speed up startup and data access compared with HDDs. ...