A modern personal computer mainly consists of at least one Central Processing Unit (CPU), random access memory (RAM), graphics processing unit (GPU), display, wired or wireless network interfaces, storage (hard disks, solid state drives, etc.), several communication ports such as USB, and input devices such as a keyboard, mouse, touchpad, touch screen, camera, microphone and so on. All of these components are coordinated by the operating system (OS), which is a software that helps the user applications to interact with the underlying hardware.

Each component integrated to the computer is a high-tech device that comes with its own cost and capacity. May it be a CPU that performs several hundred billions of floating point operations per second (FLOPS) , a RAM unit that can store and retrieve data in lightening speeds, or a wired/wireless network interface that is capable of transferring several gigabits (Gb) of data per second, all devices have their physical limitations.