Hardware, storage and the IPOS cycle
Hardware is every physical part of a computer you can touch. Its main parts are input devices, the central processing unit (CPU), primary memory, secondary storage and output devices. Together they follow one cycle: input, processing, output, storage. Paper 1 asks which part of the CPU coordinates its work: the control unit.
By the end of this page you can
- Explain what the CPU’s control unit and ALU do
- Tell RAM, ROM and secondary storage apart
- Describe the IPOS cycle
- Put units of storage in order of size
Goals tick themselves off as you try the activities below.
Photo: Kurt Kaiser, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped, labels blurred, resized, JPEG q72.
Open the case and every part you see is hardware.
How often it shows up in past papers
All papers14 of 14 papers
Last 55 of 5 · 2019–2025
Paper 1 counts come from our past-paper bank of CSEC Information Technology Paper 1s. The last-5 row shows how often it came up in the five most recent papers.
Inside this topic
- Inside the computerLocked
- The IPOS cycleLocked
- Key termsLocked
- Test yourselfmarkedLocked
- Practise for real · 5 past questionsLocked