It is the electronic circuitry of a computer that carries out the actual processing and usually referred as the brain of the computer. It is commonly called processor also. Physically, a CPU can be placed on one or more microchips called integrated circuits (IC). The ICs comprise semiconductor materials.
The CPU is given instructions and data through programs. The CPU then fetches the program and data from the memory and performs arithmetic and logic operations as per the given instructions and stores the result back to memory. While processing, the CPU stores the data as well as instructions in its local memory called registers. Registers are part of the CPU chip and they are limited in size and number. Different registers are used for storing data, instructions or intermediate results. Other than the registers, the CPU has two main components — Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) and Control Unit (CU). ALU performs all the arithmetic and logic operations that need to be done as per the instruction in a program. CU controls sequential instruction execution, interprets instructions and guides data flow through the computer’s memory, ALU and input or output devices. CPU is also popularly known as microprocessor. We will study more about it in section 1.5.
