The OS and the Hardware

The OS is the “permanent” software with the power to:

• control/abstract/mediate access to the hardware
  CPUs and memory
  
  I/O devices
• so user code can be:
  simpler
  
  device-independent
  portable
  even “transportable”

I/O Bus

Memory Bus

Processor

Cache

Main

Memory

Disk

Controller

Disk

Disk

Graphics

Controller

Network

Interface

Graphics

Network

interrupts

I/O Bridge

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