Hardware architecture

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An orthographically projected diagram of the F-117A Nighthawk.
An F-117 conducts a live exercise bombing run using GBU-27 laser-guided bombs.

In engineering, hardware architecture refers to the identification of a system's physical components and their interrelationships. This description, often called a hardware design model, allows hardware designers to understand how their components fit into a system architecture and provides to software component designers important information needed for software development and integration. Clear definition of a hardware architecture allows the various traditional engineering disciplines (e.g., electrical and mechanical engineering) to work more effectively together to develop and manufacture new machines, devices and components.[1]

Hardware is also an expression used within the computer engineering industry to explicitly distinguish the (

electronic computer) hardware from the software that runs on it. But hardware, within the automation and software engineering
disciplines, need not simply be a computer of some sort. A modern automobile runs vastly more software than the Apollo spacecraft. Also, modern aircraft cannot function without running tens of millions of computer instructions embedded and distributed throughout the aircraft and resident in both standard computer hardware and in specialized hardward components such as IC wired logic gates, analog and hybrid devices, and other digital components. The need to effectively model how separate physical components combine to form complex systems is important over a wide range of applications, including computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), cell phones, surgical instrumentation, satellites, and submarines.

Hardware architecture is the representation of an engineered (or to be engineered) electronic or electromechanical hardware system, and the process and discipline for effectively implementing the

It is a representation because it is used to convey information about the related elements comprising a hardware system, the relationships among those elements, and the rules governing those relationships.

Electric multi-turn valve actuator with controls.

It is a process because a sequence of steps is prescribed to produce or change the architecture, and/or a design from that architecture, of a hardware system within a set of constraints.

It is a discipline because a body of knowledge is used to inform practitioners as to the most effective way to design the system within a set of constraints.

A hardware architecture is primarily concerned with the internal electrical (and, more rarely, the

HCI; formerly called the man-machine interface.)[3] Integrated circuit (IC) designers are driving current technologies into innovative approaches for new products. Hence, multiple layers of active devices are being proposed as single chip, opening up opportunities for disruptive microelectronic, optoelectronic, and new microelectromechanical hardware implementation.[4][5]

Background

A hardware architecture example, which is integrated as a handheld medical device for diabetes monitoring.
U-boat layout, with detailed equipment hardware specification and functionality.

Prior to the advent of digital computers, the electronics and other engineering disciplines used the terms system and hardware as they are still commonly used today. However, with the arrival of digital computers on the scene and the development of software engineering as a separate discipline, it was often necessary to distinguish among engineered hardware artifacts, software artifacts, and the combined artifacts.

A programmable hardware artifact, or machine, that lacks its computer program is impotent; even as a software artifact, or program, is equally impotent unless it can be used to alter the sequential states of a suitable (hardware) machine. However, a hardware machine and its programming can be designed to perform an almost illimitable number of abstract and physical tasks. Within the computer and software engineering disciplines (and, often, other engineering disciplines, such as communications), then, the terms hardware, software, and system came to distinguish between the hardware that runs a computer program, the software, and the hardware device complete with its program.

A hardware can be control from a software with the help of a middle device called hardware controller, this hardware controller can be used to perform various automated task from hardware, generally hardware controller consist of GPIO(general purpose input and output) pins, these pin's behaviour controlled by the piece of code.[6]

The hardware engineer or architect deals (more or less) exclusively with the hardware device; the software engineer or architect deals (more or less) exclusively with the program; and the systems engineer or systems architect is responsible for seeing that the programming is capable of properly running within the hardware device, and that the system composed of the two entities is capable of properly interacting with its external environment, especially the user, and performing its intended function.

A hardware architecture, then, is an abstract representation of an electronic or an electromechanical device capable of running a fixed or changeable program.[7][8]

A hardware architecture generally includes some form of analog, digital, or

validation tests
of the user's requirements in the as-built system.

See also

References

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  2. doi:10.1016/S0003-682X(03)00005-7.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
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  3. S2CID 25962199.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
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  4. S2CID 95022083.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
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  5. PMID 27879858.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
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  6. ^ "Techsoverflow - it is all about tech Techsoverflow". Retrieved 2022-12-17.
  7. PMID 3165452.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
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  8. doi:10.1016/j.snb.2007.11.016.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )