Hello friends, in this article you will be able to know about IPO in computers which is a basic working principle of computing.

The full form of IPO in the computer is Input, Output, and Process. All the computer works on IPO cycle. We will discuss this IPO cycle in this article.

IPO stands for Input, Process, and Output. Basically, every computer works on the IPO cycle. We all know that the definition of a computer is “Computer is an electronic device that accepts raw facts and figures, processes it at produces meaningful results called output.” As the definition describes computer takes input, processes it, and produces a result. This whole cycle of taking input to produce output is called the IPO cycle in computers. For every task, the computer uses the IPO cycle. We provide input through input devices, process with a processing unit, and get output through output devices.

Simply, input is the raw facts and figures given to the computer for processing further and producing meaningful results. And input devices are the devices that are used to provide input into the computers. For eg. keyboard, mouse, trackpad, joystick, etc. Let’s take the example of Input in the IPO cycle. Consider, you gave the computer input like this “Ram; 18; Nepal”. Now, the given input will be provided to the processing unit of the computer to process the data and produce a meaningful outcome. In the same example, you can see that the input doesn’t provide a meaningful result. We don’t know what Ram is and also don’t know what 18 stands for and what Nepal means. This is basically a raw fact and figure that needs to process i.e. input. So, this is “I” is the IPO cycle of computers.

Simply, the processing is the series of tasks to transform then raw facts and figures into meaningful outcomes called output. And the device that does this task is known as the processing unit. Also, we have different processing units like central processing units, logical units, etc. We are not going to discuss these processing units under this topic. Let’s get ahead with the above-considered example. We provided the raw fact and figure through the input device, now that data will reach the processing unit. Now, the processing unit will create a meaningful result that is ready for the user to read. But, this unit cannot display the information to the user. Now, the above data will be transformed to something like “Ram is 18 years old and lives in Nepal”, and will get stored into the computer. Now, it’s ready to be displayed. This stage of computing is “P” in the IPO cycle of computers.

Basically, the output is the meaningful result that is ready for the user to read which is generated by the processing unit and passed to an output device for displaying output. Since the processing unit only can create the output but cannot display that output, we need output devices. Some examples of output devices are monitors, printers, speakers, etc. Also, we have two types of output devices i.e. Hard copy output device and soft copy output device. But, we will not discuss them on this topic. Now let’s get back to the above example. Since the output was already created by processing the input, now the output “Ram is 18 years old and lives in Nepal” is now ready to be displayed through output devices. Now user can see the output through the output device. Likewise, the computing process ends with “O” in the IPO cycle of computers i.e. Output.

So, we walked through the whole process of the IPO cycle on the computer. Now, if you have any query you can comment down below and also read about some more topics of computers on our blog.