CPU
Central Processing Unit
What is it?
What it does
The CPU (Central Processing Unit) – which is also called microprocessor or processor – is in charge of processing data. How it will process data will depend on the program. The program can be a spreadsheet, a word processor or a game: for the CPU it makes no difference, since it doesn’t understand what the program is actually doing. It just follows the orders (called commands or instructions) contained inside the program. These orders could be to add two numbers or to send a piece of data to the video card, for example.
When you double click on an icon to run a program, here is what happens:
1. The program, which is stored inside the hard disk drive, is transferred to the RAM memory. A program is a series of instructions to the CPU.
2. The CPU, using a circuit called memory controller, loads the program data from the RAM memory.
3. The data, now inside the CPU, is processed.
4. What happens next will depend on the program. The CPU could continue to load and executing the program or could do something with the processed data, like displaying something on the screen.