How CPUs Communicate with a Variety of Devices Explained 🖥️
Discover how modern CPUs interact seamlessly with countless devices in your computer. Sponsored by Brilliant—try it free for 30 days at https://brilliant.org/CoreDumped!

Core Dumped
243.5K views • Oct 8, 2025

About this video
This video was sponsored by Brilliant.
To try everything Brilliant has to offer—free—for a full 30 days, visit https://brilliant.org/CoreDumped. You’ll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription.
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In this video we learn the basics of I/O devices, and how the interact with the the CPU in general purpose systems.
00:00 - Intro
00:33 - Content table
00:49 - What are I/O devices
01:12 - Why the CPU shouldn’t directly control peripherals
02:22 - Keyboard as an example of I/O logic
04:19 - Role of microcontrollers and the control bus
05:13 - Hard Drive Disk example of device controllers handling I/O operations
07:05 - Sponsor’s Message
08:21 - I/O hardware implementation overview
08:56 - Memory-Mapped I/O (MMIO)
10:45 - Isolated I/O (Port-Mapped I/O)
12:16 - Programmed I/O (Polling)
13:11 - Interrupt-Driven I/O
14:12 - MMI + Custom I/O Buses
15:02 - Northbridge and Southbridge architecture
16:14 - Integration of I/O control into modern CPUs
17:47 - Why systems still use Memory-Mapped I/O
18:45 - Why were 80’s computer incompatible with each other
20:07 - Standardization and compatibility (PCIe, SATA, USB)
22:05 - Device drivers as translators
22:25 - Closing
To try everything Brilliant has to offer—free—for a full 30 days, visit https://brilliant.org/CoreDumped. You’ll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription.
Join CodeCrafters and learn by creating your own: Redis, Git, Http server, Interpreter, Grep... in your favorite programming language:
https://app.codecrafters.io/join?via=jdvillal
Sponsor my work on Github:
https://github.com/jdvillal
Questions and business inquires:
contact.coredumped@gmail.com
Join our discord server:
https://discord.gg/szyQsXfzuv
Follow me on twitter:
https://twittter.com/coredumpped
In this video we learn the basics of I/O devices, and how the interact with the the CPU in general purpose systems.
00:00 - Intro
00:33 - Content table
00:49 - What are I/O devices
01:12 - Why the CPU shouldn’t directly control peripherals
02:22 - Keyboard as an example of I/O logic
04:19 - Role of microcontrollers and the control bus
05:13 - Hard Drive Disk example of device controllers handling I/O operations
07:05 - Sponsor’s Message
08:21 - I/O hardware implementation overview
08:56 - Memory-Mapped I/O (MMIO)
10:45 - Isolated I/O (Port-Mapped I/O)
12:16 - Programmed I/O (Polling)
13:11 - Interrupt-Driven I/O
14:12 - MMI + Custom I/O Buses
15:02 - Northbridge and Southbridge architecture
16:14 - Integration of I/O control into modern CPUs
17:47 - Why systems still use Memory-Mapped I/O
18:45 - Why were 80’s computer incompatible with each other
20:07 - Standardization and compatibility (PCIe, SATA, USB)
22:05 - Device drivers as translators
22:25 - Closing
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Video Information
Views
243.5K
Likes
21.3K
Duration
23:28
Published
Oct 8, 2025
User Reviews
4.7
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