How do you go from some silicon wafer with some metallic lines printed on it to having a GUI desktop. I don’t understand the intersection between hardware and software at the fundamental level.
In: Technology
the most fundamental thing you should understand to start to get is is that computers work fast. extremely fast. modern CPUs run at 4 billion cycles per second, and most have 4 or more “cores” or physical cpu’s on one chip. so your computer can do 16 billion tasks per second. for reference on how fast that is, in the time it takes a photon of light to go from the bulb in your ceiling to the floor, your computer has done 10 or so commands.
now, every task the computer does is super simple, take number, take other number, add numbers together, display result. they are super simple tasks that get stacked together to make complex tasks. then if you work in some advanced geometry, trig, and calculus those simple commands become math to draw lines and shapes on the screen. when you move the mouse, to the computer that is glacially slow, so it can have a queue of mouse movements to handle every few thousand, or million cpu cycles and our meat brains wont even notice that the movements had to wait in line for the processor.
tldr: the cpu does at least 16 billion simple tasks every second, when you stack them all together you can draw very fancy things on the screen and process human input so fast that said human doesn’t even notice the time it takes to process
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