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By contrast, software is a set of written instructions that can be stored and run by hardware. Hardware derived its name from the fact it is hard or rigid with respect to changes, whereas software is soft because it is easy to change. Hardware is typically directed by the software to execute any command or instruction.
The application software layer interfaces with the operating system, which in turn communicates with the hardware. The arrows indicate information flow. The arrows indicate information flow. There are two main types of software:
Hardware is also an expression used within the computer engineering industry to explicitly distinguish the (electronic computer) hardware from the software that runs on it. But hardware, within the automation and software engineering disciplines, need not simply be a computer of some sort. A modern automobile runs vastly more software than the ...
Software is a set of programmed instructions stored in the memory of stored-program digital computers for execution by the processor. Software is a recent development in human history and is fundamental to the Information Age.
See also References External links A Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) A dedicated video bus standard introduced by INTEL enabling 3D graphics capabilities; commonly present on an AGP slot on the motherboard. (Presently a historical expansion card standard, designed for attaching a video card to a computer's motherboard (and considered high-speed at launch, one of the last off-chip parallel ...
Software architecture is the set of structures needed to reason about a software system and the discipline of creating such structures and systems. Each structure comprises software elements, relations among them, and properties of both elements and relations.
System software includes the operating system, which couples computer hardware with application software. [122] The purpose of the operating system is to provide an environment where application software executes in a convenient and efficient manner. [122] Both application software and system software execute utility programs.
A hardware abstraction layer (HAL) is an abstraction layer, implemented in software, between the physical hardware of a computer and the software that runs on that computer. . Its function is to hide differences in hardware from most of the operating system kernel, so that most of the kernel-mode code does not need to be changed to run on systems with different hardwa