The CPU is a microprocessor found on the motherboard of your computer or mobile device. Often compared to the brain of your device, the CPU uses billions of microscopic transistors to translate instructions from your operating system into the ones and zeroes that allow the machine to operate.
The process begins with a register in the CPU called the program counter that stores the memory address of the next instruction to be processed. The instruction is then fetched by the processor from RAM, which can be either DRAM or SRAM (synthetic random access memory). Once the instruction is fetched, it’s decoded into a set of control signals that tell other parts of the CPU what to do. Finally, the operation is executed. The results may be saved in internal CPU registers or written to slower main memory. The entire process is controlled by a central clock that produces regular electrical pulses to synchronize the components.
In modern systems, a CPU works with a GPU to increase throughput by allowing multiple operations to take place simultaneously. This is like asking a ringmaster to flip hundreds of burgers at once instead of just one. The two types of processors have different strengths, so they’re better suited to different tasks. Cpu’s