Almost everyone knows that in the computer, the main element among all the "iron" components is the central processor. But the circle of people who imagine how the processor works is very limited. Most users have no idea about this. And even when the system suddenly starts to “slow down”, many people think that this processor does not work well and do not attach importance to other factors. To fully understand the situation, consider some aspects of the CPU.
What is a central processing unit?
A central processing unit (CPU or in the English version of the CPU) is the heart of any computer system. It is entrusted with all the computational operations, not only arithmetic or floating point calculations (variable mantissa), but also logical ones.
The processor itself is a small square plate (chip), inside which are millions of transistors. Sometimes this device is also called an integrated circuit.
What does a processor consist of?
If we talk about how the Intel processor or its competitor AMD works, you need to see how these chips work. The first microprocessor (incidentally, namely from Intel, model 4040) appeared back in 1971. He could perform only the simplest operations of addition and subtraction with processing only 4 bits of information, i.e., had a 4-bit architecture.
Modern processors, like the first-born, are based on transistors and have much greater speed. They are made by photolithography from a certain number of individual silicon wafers that make up a single crystal into which transistors are imprinted. The circuit is created on a special accelerator with accelerated boron ions. In the internal structure of processors, the main components are cores, buses, and functional particles called revisions.
Main characteristics
Like any other device, the processor is characterized by certain parameters, which, when answering the question of how the processor works, cannot be ignored. First of all, this:
- Number of Cores;
- number of threads;
- cache size (internal memory);
- clock frequency;
- tire speed.
For now, let’s dwell on the clock frequency. No wonder the processor is called the heart of the computer. Like the heart, it works in pulsation mode with a certain number of beats per second. Clock frequency is measured in MHz or GHz. The higher it is, the more operations the device can perform.
At what frequency the processor works, you can find out from its declared characteristics or see the information in the system information. But in the process of processing commands, the frequency can change, and during overclocking (overlocking) increase to extreme limits. Thus, the claimed clock frequency is just an average indicator.
The number of cores is an indicator that determines the number of processor centers in the processor (not to be confused with threads - the number of cores and threads may not coincide). Due to this distribution, it becomes possible to redirect operations to other kernels, thereby increasing overall performance.
How the processor works: command processing
Now a little about the structure of executable commands. If you look at how the processor works, you need to clearly imagine that any command has two components - operational and operand.
The operating part indicates what the computer system should perform at the moment, the operand determines what the processor should work on. In addition, the processor core may contain two computing centers (containers, streams) that divide the execution of a command into several stages:
- production;
- decryption;
- command execution;
- memory access to the processor itself
- saving the result.
Today, separate caching is used in the form of using two levels of cache memory, which helps to avoid interception by two or more teams of access to one of the memory blocks.
Processors according to the type of instruction processing are divided into linear (execution of instructions in the order of their recording queue), cyclic and branching (execution of instructions after processing branch conditions).
Operations in progress
Among the main functions assigned to the processor, in the sense of executed commands or instructions, three main tasks are distinguished:
- mathematical operations based on arithmetic logic device;
- moving data (information) from one type of memory to another;
- making decisions on the execution of the command, and on its basis - the choice of switching to the execution of other sets of commands.
Memory Interaction (ROM and RAM)
In this process, components such as a bus and a read and write channel that are connected to the storage devices should be noted. ROM contains a constant set of bytes. First, the address bus requests a specific byte from the ROM, then transfers it to the data bus, after which the read channel changes its state and the ROM provides the requested byte.
But processors can not only read data from RAM, but also write them. In this case, the recording channel is used. But, if you understand, by and large, modern computers could theoretically do without RAM, since modern microcontrollers are able to place the necessary data bytes directly in the memory of the processor chip itself. But there is no way to do without ROM.
Among other things, the start of the system is started from the equipment testing mode (BIOS command), and only then control is transferred to the loaded operating system.
How to check if the processor is working?
Now let's look at some aspects of the processor health check. You need to clearly understand that if the processor did not work, the computer would not be able to start the download at all.
Another thing is when you need to look at an indicator of the use of processor capabilities at a certain point. This can be done from the standard "Task Manager" (opposite to any process it is indicated how much percentage of processor load it gives). To visually determine this parameter, you can use the performance tab, where changes are tracked in real time. Advanced parameters can be seen using special programs, for example, CPU-Z.
In addition, you can use several processor cores, using the system configuration (msconfig) and additional boot parameters.
Possible problems
Finally, a few words about the problems. Here, many users often ask, they say, why does the processor work, but the monitor does not turn on? This situation has nothing to do with the central processor. The fact is that when you turn on any computer, the graphics adapter is tested first, and only then everything else. Perhaps the problem lies precisely in the processor of the graphics chip (all modern video accelerators have their own graphical processors).
But on the example of the functioning of the human body, one must understand that in the event of a cardiac arrest, the whole organism dies. So with computers. The processor does not work - the whole computer system “dies”.