Category Computer Fundamentals

Inside the CPU: The 4 Steps of the Instruction Cycle As I continue learning how computers work at their core, one fundamental concept I’ve come across is the Instruction Cycle, also known as the Fetch–Decode–Execute–Store (FDES) cycle. This cycle is…

How Computer Memory Works — From CPU Registers to Disk Swap Since I’ve started learning how computers actually work under the hood, one of the topics that completely changed how I see system performance is something called the Memory Hierarchy.…

How Computers Understand 1s and 0s: Binary System, Character Encoding, and Logical Operations We’ve all heard that computers work with 1s and 0s, but what does that actually mean? What do those 1s and 0s represent? How do letters turn…