Computer machinery and equipment, including memory, cabling, power supply, peripheral devices, and circuit boards.
Computer operation requires both hardware and software . Hardware design specifies a computer's capability; software instructs the computer on what to do. The advent of microprocessor s in the late 1970s led to much smaller hardware assemblies and accelerated the proliferation of computers. Today's mainframe s, while mainframes are now smaller and have vastly more computing power than the early models.