Winn L. Rosch Hardware Bible, Sixth Edition

Hardware Interfaces

Linking hardware to software has always been one of the biggest challenges facing those charged with designing computer systems—not just individual computers but whole families of computers, those able to run the same programs. The solution has almost invariably been to wed the two together by layering on software, so much so that the fastest processors struggle when confronted by relatively simple tasks. An almost unbelievable amount of computer power gets devoted to moving bytes from software to hardware through a maze of program code, all in the name of making the widest variety of hardware imaginable work with a universal (at least if Microsoft has its way) operating system.

The underlying problem is the same as in any ...