A family of

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...

models is said to be compatible if certain

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...

that runs on one of the models can also be run on all other models of the family. The computer models may differ in

performance A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Management science In the work place ...

, reliability or some other characteristic. These differences may affect the outcome of the running of the software.

Software compatibility

Software compatibility can refer to the compatibility that a particular software has running on a particular CPU architecture such as Intel or

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple– IBM– ...

. Software compatibility can also refer to ability for the software to run on a particular

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

. Very rarely is a compiled software compatible with multiple different CPU architectures. Normally, an application is compiled for different CPU architectures and operating systems to allow it to be compatible with the different system. Interpreted software, on the other hand, can normally run on many different CPU architectures and operating systems if the interpreter is available for the architecture or operating system.

Software incompatibility Software incompatibility is a characteristic of software components or systems which cannot operate satisfactorily together on the same computer, or on different computers linked by a computer network. They may be components or systems which are in ...

occurs many times for new software released for a newer version of an operating system which is incompatible with the older version of the operating system because it may miss some of the features and functionality that the software depends on.

Hardware compatibility

Hardware compatibility can refer to the compatibility of computer hardware components with a particular CPU architecture, bus,

motherboard A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...

. Hardware that is compatible may not always run at its highest stated performance, but it can nevertheless work with legacy components. An example is

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

chips, some of which can run at a lower (or sometimes higher)

clock rate In computing, the clock rate or clock speed typically refers to the frequency at which the clock generator of a processor can generate pulses, which are used to synchronize the operations of its components, and is used as an indicator of the pr ...

than rated. Hardware that was designed for one operating system may not work for another, if device or kernel drivers are unavailable. As an example, much of the hardware for

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

is proprietary hardware with drivers unavailable for use in operating systems such as

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

Free and open-source software

References

{{reflist Interoperability Computer hardware Software

Software compatibility

Hardware compatibility

Free and open-source software

See also

References