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Chapter 6 Computer Architecture & The Machine Cycle

Computers are built as a sequence of abstractions. Logical gates hide the messy details of electrical signals behind clean Boolean logic; logic gates in turn are used to construct circuits that perform functions like “add number a to b” or “remember the last value input”; these circuit are in turn used to build the higher-level components that programs interact with - things like the processor, the main memory, and input and output devices.