Concurrency and parallelism are related terms but not the same, and often misconceived as the similar terms. The crucial difference between concurrency and parallelism is that concurrency is about dealing with a lot of things at same time (gives the illusion of simultaneity) or handling concurrent events essentially hiding latency. On the contrary, parallelism is about doing a lot of things at the same time for increasing the speed. Parallelly executing processes must be concurrent unless … [Read more...]

User Interface is the term used for specifying how a user interacts with an electronic device, particularly computer. CLI and GUI are the different kinds of user interfaces. Mainly they differ in the graphics employed in the operating system. To perform an operation on the CLI system one has to write a command. On the other hand, in GUI users provided the visual aids (graphics) that include images and icons, which facilitates users to perform a task directly. CLI systems require expertise in … [Read more...]

The links in Unix are essentially the pointers which associate to the files and directories. The major difference between a hard link and soft link is that hard link is the direct reference to the file whereas soft link is the reference by name which means it points to a file by file name. Hard link links the files and directories in the same file system, but the Soft link can traverse file system boundaries. Before understanding links we should first understand inode, an inode is a data … [Read more...]

The prior difference between Linux and Windows operating system is that Linux is totally free of cost whereas windows is marketable operating system and is costly. An operating system is a program intended to control the computer hardware and behave as an intermediary between user and hardware. Linux is an open source operating system where users can access the source code and can improve the code using the system. On the other hand, in windows, users can not access source code, and it is a … [Read more...]

Stack and Heap are the memory segments used in memory allocation techniques. The primary difference between Stack and heap is that stack involves linear and sequential allocation of the memory which is used in static memory allocation whereas heap acts as a pool of storage area that allocated the memory randomly (Dynamic memory allocation). Speed is the major parameter which distinguishes stack and heap; a stack is significantly faster than a heap. Content: Stack Vs Heap Comparison … [Read more...]

The Process and Thread are the essentially associated. The process is an execution of a program whereas thread is an execution of a program driven by the environment of a process. Another major point which differentiates process and thread is that processes are isolated with each other whereas threads share memory or resources with each other. Content: Process Vs Thread Comparison Chart Definition Key Differences Conclusion Comparison Chart Definition of Process The … [Read more...]

We all are aware of ROM i.e. Read-Only Memory which contains the data required to boot up the computer system. It is a non-volatile memory, and it can not be modified easily or even sometimes not at all. But the modern ROM can be erased and reprogrammed in some way. Today we have modified version of ROM that are EPROM (Erasable Read-Only Memory) and EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Read-Only Memory). EPROM and EEPROM can be erased and reprogrammed again but at a very slow speed. Erasing requires … [Read more...]

Register and memory, hold the data that can be directly accessed by the processor which also increases the processing speed of CPU. The processing speed of CPU can also be increased by increasing the number of bits of the register or increasing the number of the physical register in the CPU. Same is the case with memory, more the amount of memory faster is the CPU. Memory is genereally referred to the primary memory of the computer. Despite these similarities, the register and memory share … [Read more...]

Compiler and Assembler plays an important role in the execution of a program. Some compilers directly generate the executable code instead of assembly code. The compiler takes the preprocessed source code and translates it into the assembly code. The assembler takes the assembly code from the compiler and translates it to the relocatable machine code. In this article, I have discussed the differences between compiler and assembler with the help of comparison chart shown below, just have a … [Read more...]

Linker and Loader are the utility programs that plays a major role in the execution of a program. The Source code of a program passes through compiler, assembler, linker, loader in the respective order, before execution. On the one hand, where the linker intakes the object codes generated by the assembler and combine them to generate the executable module. On the other hands, the loader loads this executable module to the main memory for execution. Let us discuss the difference between Linker … [Read more...]