Week 1: Day 03 - Processing

Hello all! It's time for the next unit, Processing. We're going to cover CPUs, motherboards, processing, and the bus. Let's get started.

The Central Processing Unit (CPU), is another piece of circuitry within a computer. It processes many essential and non-essential tasks on your system. It operates by doing what a program tells it to, using mathematics and input/output, which is a little throwback to the last unit. It will fetch an instruction from the memory, decode it, then execute it, for short. Anyways, the processing power of a CPU depends on several factors. One important one, is how many cores it has. Last decade, we saw the introduction of dual-core processors. But these multi-core processors have reached to unbelievable amounts these days, with some people having eight cores. Personally, my system is quad-core and it does great. Additionally, processors have a clock rate. This refers to the frequency at which the CPU is running. Some older processors have their frequency assessed with Kilohertz (KHz), but most modern processors have their frequency measured with Gigahertz (GHz) because they're that good nowadays. Sometimes processors can be overclocked with crystals that operate at higher frequencies. This will usually increase the processor's value. (Quick Note: Everything about clock speeds that I mentioned, applies to Graphics Cards as well.)

The Motherboard is a meeting point for much of the computer's circuitry. It holds the CPU, Memory (RAM), Hard Drive, Sound Card, and Graphics Card. It is an essential part of a computer, no doubt. If you switch it out, often times you'll have to get a new copy of an Operating System. Within motherboards, data is transferred between its components/circuitry. The way it's transported is through system buses. There are three types of pins/lines on a bus: Address, Control, and Data. The Address bus passes memory addresses between the components. The Control bus sends out signals to coordinate with the components. Finally, the Data bus is where the data is transferred between the peripherals, memory, and the CPU. On that note, I'm ending this blog entry and unit (yes it's a short unit)!