What the components inside every computer and phone are for, without the marketing.
Computers are marketed in numbers — gigahertz, gigabytes, cores — that mean very little without knowing what the parts do. The processor performs instructions. Memory holds what is being worked on right now and forgets it at power-off. Storage keeps things permanently but far more slowly. Nearly every performance question comes down to the gap between those last two. These questions cover the components, the units and the vocabulary, aimed at making a specification sheet readable rather than at anyone planning to build hardware.
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
Play it insteadAnswer: D. Carries out the instructions that make up a program
Why: It stands for central processing unit. Modern chips contain several cores, each able to work on instructions at once.
Answer: C. It loses its contents when power is removed
Why: RAM holds what is in use right now and is far faster. Storage keeps data when the machine is off.
Answer: B. Graphics processing unit
Why: Built for many simple calculations in parallel, which is why they also became the standard hardware for training AI models.
Answer: A. Software that manages hardware and runs other programs
Why: Windows, macOS, Linux and Android are all operating systems. Applications talk to hardware through them.
Answer: D. 1,000
Why: Storage makers count 1,000; computers often count 1,024, which is why a drive shows less capacity than the box claims.
Answer: C. Someone else's servers accessed over the internet
Why: Your data sits in a physical data centre belonging to a provider, which is why location and jurisdiction still matter.
Answer: B. 0 and 1
Why: Each digit is a bit, and eight bits make a byte. Two states are easy to represent reliably as voltage.
Answer: A. Software that lets the operating system control a device
Why: Printers, graphics cards and other hardware need one. Missing drivers are a common cause of a device not working.
Answer: D. Flash memory chips
Why: No moving parts means far faster access and better resistance to knocks, at a higher cost per gigabyte.
Answer: C. How many cycles the chip performs each second
Why: One gigahertz is a billion cycles per second. Comparing clock speeds across different chip designs is unreliable.
Stripped of the vocabulary, it is pattern-finding in data. What follows from that, including the failures.
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