Interface (computer science)

In computing, an interface is a shared boundary across which three separate components of a computer system exchange information. The exchange can be between software, computer hardware, peripheral devices, humans and combinations of these. Some computer hardware devices such as a touchscreen can both send and receive data through the interface, while others such as a mouse or microphone may only provide an interface to send data to a given system.

Hardware interfaces exist in many of the components such as the various buses, storage devices, other I/O devices, etc. A hardware interface is described by the mechanical, electrical and logical signals at the interface and the protocol for sequencing them (sometimes called signaling). A standard interface, such as SCSI, decouples the design and introduction of computing hardware, such as I/O devices, from the design and introduction of other components of a computing system, thereby allowing users and manufacturers great flexibility in the implementation of computing systems. Hardware interfaces can be parallel with several electrical connections carrying parts of the data simultaneously, or serial where data is sent one bit at a time.

A software interface may refer to a wide range of different types of interface at different "levels": an operating system may interface with pieces of hardware. Applications or programs running on the operating system may need to interact via streams, and in object oriented programs, objects within an application may need to interact via methods.

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