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Zero's and ones/off and on

Phil2008

Phil2008

Phil2008

Soldato
Joined
17 Dec 2004
Posts
8,743
It got me thinking the other day how cpu's can do anything with 0s and 1s, because how can a cpu draw lets say, draw a square with a bunch of 0s and 1s:confused::eek:
 
Its like digital and optical audio connection, how the ***** can 1 cable send signals to 2 or more speaker channels at once. the mind boggles even more so with optical because that uses light.:eek:
 
Phil2008 said:
Its like digital and optical audio connection, how the ***** can 1 cable send signals to 2 or more speaker channels at once. the mind boggles even more so with optical because that uses light.:eek:
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One of my old University Physics lecturer's is also a contracted BBC presenter and if you are a fan of documentaries, he covers this subject a bit at a College level in on of his documentaries. I cant remember what it was called but his name is Jim Al-Khalili if you are interested in killing some time educationally.

I will warn you, they are aimed at the general public (which the BBC seems to think are half brain dead) and so are quite condescending at times.

The short answer is:

Kreeeee said:
Because math.
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But to be honest, ^ is the short answer to pretty much everything... 42
 
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I'd say "lets" is the only one where he's definitely wrong.

cpu's is probably acceptable as cpus is a little ambiguous. That said, I would personally use CPUs.

Anyway, zeroes and ones....
 
Being a pedantic bell end about grammar dosnt all of a sudden mean you understand binary and therefore on the basic level any of the coding languages currently in use. But if it makes you feel better acting like a condescending ***** feel free...or you could explain to the poster how "1's and 0's" actually make shiney lights appear on the big picture frame thing.
 
binary lets you do counting (obviously) using base 2 (because chips can only really do off and on). its a good sytem, with the fingers on your hand you can count to 1023 compared with a mere 10 under the decimal system.

then theres various languages that while many and varied, all translate binary numbers into letters and decimal numbers. then with those you can write instructions to do maths.

with maths you can do pretty much anything. what makes computers impressive is the speed they can do logical tasks. to translate to a screen its just a grid of dots with a set range of colours per dot.

so its like doing a connect the dots puzzle and painting by numbers as well as a truckload of trigonometry 60 times every second.

*diclaimer, this may not be accurate, its just how I understand it*
 
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This is an interesting topic and one that probably cant be summarised in a single forum post but here goes.

0 and 1's are just the very simplistic language a computer uses, a pattern of 0 and 1's are strung together to make an instruction. An instruction is decoded using logic gates (look up a simple AND gate or similar you will see how these fit in - although dont be fooled in a CPU gates are not implemented in that way). Once an instruction is decoded the CPU can act upon this i.e. retrieve some info from this address location etc. Putting many millions of instructions together will in the end result in a program that is able to draw on the screen etc.

*there are many many more layers to this but basically that is how it works.
 
Magic, more specifically the magic smoke which you only see if you manage to kill a component in spectacular fashion.
 
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