Introduction to Microprocessor

A microprocessor or processor is the heart of the computer and it performs all the computational tasks, calculations and data processing etc. inside the computer. Microprocessor is the brain of the computer. In the computers, the most popular type of the processor is the Intel Pentium chip and the Pentium 1V is the latest chip by Intel Corporation. The microprocessors can be classified based on the following features.
Instruction Set It is the set of the instructions that the Microprocessor can execute. Bandwidth The number of bits processed by the processor in a single instruction. Clock Speed Clock speed is measured in the MHz and it determines that how many instructions a processor can processed.
The speed of the microprocessor is measured in the MHz or GHz. The processor is also known as the CPU (Central Processing Unit). It contains the control unit and the arithmetic unit and both works together to process the commands. CPU is used in every computer whether it is a workstation, server or a laptop. CPU is a complete computational engine that is designed as a chip. It starts the work when you turn on your computer. CPU is designed to perform the arithmetic and logical operations inside the computer. Common operations inside the computer include adding, subtracting, multiplying, comparing the values and fetching the different numbers to process them. The higher the CPU clocks’ speed the more efficient will be the performance of the computer. Computer’s performance is also influenced by the system bus architecture, memory used, type of the processor and software program being running. Pentium 4 is the fastest type of the Intel’s processor that contains 125,000,000 transistors and operates at the speed of 3.6 GHz.

How Microprocessors Work

The computer you are using to read this page uses a microprocessor to do its work. The microprocessor is the heart of any normal computer, whether it is a desktop machine, a server or a laptop. The microprocessor you are using might be a Pentium, a K6, a PowerPC, a Sparc or any of the many other brands and types of microprocessors, but they all do approximately the same thing in approximately the same way.
A microprocessor -- also known as a CPU or central processing unit -- is a complete computation engine that is fabricated on a single chip. The first microprocessor was the Intel 4004, introduced in 1971. The 4004 was not very powerful -- all it could do was add and subtract, and it could only do that 4 bits at a time. But it was amazing that everything was on one chip. Prior to the 4004, engineers built computers either from collections of chips or from discrete components (transistors wired one at a time). The 4004 powered one of the first portable electronic calculators.
If you have ever wondered what the microprocessor in your computer is doing, or if you have ever wondered about the differences between types of microprocessors, then read on. In this article, you will learn how fairly simple digital logic techniques allow a computer to do its job, whether its playing a game or spell checking a document!