The CPU

The Computer's CPU

The CPU, or central processing unit, also known as the processor, is the heart of the computer. From the moment you turn your computer on, all of the circuits along the motherboard, within the RAM and the hard drives and the PCI cards and the external devices, begin switching on and off. Through these electrical signals, they pass requests for information between one another through the CPU. When the CPU receives a request for an instruction from memory, it retrieves it as a string of ones and zeros from the appropriate memory location (RAM, hard drive, disk, etc.) Then, it breaks up that string of ones and zeros into several parts, all of which tell it what signals to send along to other devices in order to execute the necessary function. Once it has decoded the instruction, it sends out the information to the necessary resistors and components in order to execute the command, then writes back the results of the execution step to memory, whether it is the CPUs own internal memory which it uses to quickly access data results for subsequent commands, or to main memory if some tangible data was written that needs to be stored.

The Back of the Computer's CPU

The square connector that holds your CPU onto the motherboard is called the Socket A connector. There are always several failsafes in place to hold it down, including a lever that you have to move in order to install or remove it, and a heat sink that installs over the top of the CPU to keep it from overheating.



Now that you know the basic function of the CPU, you can check out: