It is common to hear the argument that the development of the CPU (microprocessor) in terms of its size, power, and speed has driven the computer revolution. What other aspects of the computer system have driven the computer revolution?

What will be an ideal response?

The previous question pointed out the importance of the bus. Without USB/FireWire and WiFi/Bluetooth, interconnectivity would not be possible and mobile Internet applications would not exist. Similarly, the development of low?cost peripherals such as printers, scanners, displays, mice and keyboards has made the personal computer an almost essential household item.

Three other developments that have been vital to the growth of the computer are:

a. The display. Portable computing would be impossible without low?cost, high?resolution, energy?efficient color displays.

b. The development of the disk drive provides large quantities of low?cost data storage. Although performance has increased relatively little (time to read and write data), storage capacity has risen from about 5 MB to about 5 TB which represents a million?fold increase in capacity.

c. The development of flash?memory. The hard disk is relatively bulky and has high power consumption. Flash memory now provides the non?volatile storage required by MP3 players, digital cameras, and some notebook/netbook computers.