The CPU

The CPU

1. The brain of the Computer system.

2. It processes all of the data and instructions that make the system work.

   • The processing power of a CPU depends on different characteristics, like its clock speed,number of cores and cache size

3. The CPU architecture describes the main components of the CPU, how they interact with each other, and with other parts of the computer system.

   • Von neumann and Harvard are the two main types of architecture

4. The CPU has Three Main Parts

   • The control Unit CU - The control unit is in overall control of the CPU. Its main job is to execute program instructions by following the Fetch-Decode-Execute Cycle
   • The Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) - The ALU basically does all the calculations. It completes simple addition and subtraction, compares the size of numbers and can do multiplications and divisions using repeated addition and subtractions.
     • It preforms logic operations such as AND,OR and NOT. It also preforms binary shifts and contains the accumulator register.
   • The cache - The cache is very fast memory in the CPU. Its slower than the registers but faster than RAM. It stores regularly used data so that the CPU can access it quickly the next time it's needed. When the CPU requests data, it checks the cache first to see if the data is there. If not, it will fetch it from RAM.
     • Cache have a low capacity and are expensive compared to RAM and secondary storage.
     • There are different Levels of Cache memory: L1, L2 and L3. L1 is the quickest but has the lowest capacity. L3 is slower than L2 and L1 but can hold more.

5. VON NEUMANN ARCHITECTURE

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