Central processing unit: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:35, 9 September 2011

Revision as of 08:35, 9 September 2011

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On large machines, CPUs require one or more printed circuit boards. On personal computers and small workstations, the CPU is housed in a single chip called a microprocessor. Since the 1970s the microprocessor class of CPUs has almost completely overtaken all other CPU implementations. Modern CPUs are large scale [[integrated circuit]]s in small, rectangular packages, with multiple connecting pins.

Naš učitel ga nima! Two typical components of a CPU are the arithmetic logic unit (ALU), which performs arithmetic and logical operations, and the control unit (CU), which extracts instructions from memory and decodes and executes them, calling on the ALU when necessary.

Not all computational systems rely on a central processing unit. An array processor or [[vector processor]] has multiple parallel computing elements, with no one unit considered the "center". In the [[distributed computing]] model, problems are solved by a distributed interconnected set of processors.