Computer Architecture | is it Hardware or Software

Is computer architecture hardware or software or neither hardware nor software?

Computer architecture is the study that deals with analysis, design and configuration of computer system and what feature should be included.

Computer architecture covers computer systems, microprocessors, circuits, and system programs. Because of that computer science, computer engineering and electronics engineering fields overlaps extensively in computer architecture.

To see other definitions or meanings of computer architecture click here.

The purpose of this post is to see if computer architecture is software or hardware in nature or if it is neither software nor hardware. In other words one can ask what is the different between computer software architecture and computer hardware architecture.

If you have not read the post on basic computer organisation do it now before we start our comparison of the software and hardware architecture - as it will make life easier us here.

Software versus Hardware:

Software consists of abstract ideas, algorithms, and their computer representations, namely programs. Hardware, in contrast, consists of tangible objects such as integrated circuits, printed circuit boards, cables, power supplies, memories, and printers.

Software and hardware aspects are intimately tied together, and to achieve a good understanding of computer systems, it is important to study both, especially how they integrate with each other.

The boundary between the software and the hardware is of particular interest to systems programmers and compiler developers. In the very first computers, this boundary: the instruction set architecture: was quite clear; the hardware presented the programmer with an abstract model that took instructions from a serial program one at a time and executed them in the order in which they appear in the program. Over time, however, this boundary blurred considerably, as more and more hardware features are exposed to the software, and hardware design itself involves software programming techniques. Nowadays, it is often difficult to tell software and hardware apart, especially at the boundary between them.

The central theme of this work to the question: "Computer architecture is neither software nor hardware, discuss?" is on my own opinion that:

Hardware and software are logically equivalent.

Any operation performed by software can also be built directly into the hardware and vice versa. Embedded systems, which are more specialized than their general-purpose counterpart, tend to do more through hardware than through software. In general, new functionality is first introduced in software, as it is likely to undergo many changes. As the functionality becomes more standard and is less likely to change, it is migrated to hardware.

Any instruction executed by the hardware can also be simulated in software.

The decision to put certain functions in hardware and others in software is based on such factors as cost, speed, reliability, and frequency of expected changes. These decisions change with trends in technology and computer usage.

So computer architecture is neither software nor hardware: Since the hardware can execute instructions that the software can execute and the software can execute instructions that hardware can execute. It means that computer architecture may not involve the hardware and software aspect of a computer system during architectural design. Base on this, computer architecture, is a bridge between hardware and software. This involves but partially the hardware and the software since it is a bridge. Why? Because architecture base on this context must have a link to the hardware and a link to the software, so that it can bridge the two.

I also see computer hardware and software as a component (subsystems) of computer architecture.

Computer is hardware: Early computer might have being designed from the hardware perspective and perhaps the it is completely hardware.  ENIAC is the first programmable general-purpose electronic digital computer, built during World War II by the United States:

"Up to that time, the war-time computers where 'programmed' more or less by rebuilding the entire machine to carry out a different task. For example, the early computer called ENIAC took three weeks to re-wire in order to do a different calculation”.

Even before this time it was only engineers that can use the computer. To solve this problem John Von Neumann now say: Let all instructions and data (software) be stored as numbers within the computer. So that:

i. The instructions could be changed without any rewiring of connections and so faster; and
ii. Since the instruction could thus be stored as numbers, the computer could manipulate instructions and their sequence.

So it was his idea that brought about software into computer system. Instead of re-wiring the computer, one can easily change the symbol(s), token(s) and/or character(s) where necessary.
If the software part of a computer system is removed the hardware can still function but the software can’t function without hardware.
So base on this fact computer is hardware. What do you think?

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