Itt tech

Computer processor is the part of the computer system which interprets instructions given by the user and processes the data and gives the output. It is also known as central processing unit of the computer system as it controls the working of the computer. A computer processor which is manufactured using the integrated circuits is called microprocessor. Since somewhere in 1970s all the types of the computer processors were replaced by the microprocessors and in the current computer processors iit tech generally refer to some kind of microprocessor.

The computer processor iit tech deals with all the logic which is needed for the complex computer programs. The type, design and use of the computer processors have changed significantly over the period of time but their fundamental operation remains the same.

Previously the computer processors were designed separately for specific purpose but these were found to be very expensive. This led to the development of cheap and standardized processors that can handle different types of works. In the present the integrated circuits allow many complex processes to be designed which has led to an increase in the presence commonly as compared to the limited application of dedicated computing processors.

The first microprocessor Intel 4004 was introduced in 1970 and the first microprocessor that was widely used was Intel 8080 which was introduced in 1974 which laid the foundation stone for the present day computer processors.

Though there is much change in the size, design, complexity and form of the processor over the last 60 years still there has not been much change in the basic design and function. Even today the processors and can be described as Von Neumann programming storing machines.

Now how do the computer processors operate? Whatever the form of the computer processors their main function is to execute programs which are stored in form of a sequence of instructions. Every operation takes place according to certain steps which are fetching, decode, execute and display.

Fetch is the first step and it retrieves an instruction from the program memory. After that, the instruction is broken into the parts that are significant to the processor. Now the different parts half the processor are connected in order to complete the given task. Then the final step of displaying the result is still taken up. Here the result may be stored in some internal register or main memory of the processor. This process goes on again and again. Almost all the modern processors represent the numbers in the binary form in which digit is represented by a physical quantity having two values high or low. And all of the numbers are and represented by bits and the number for bits together iit tech form of word size of a bit width which in turn represent the memory address. In case, if a processor uses 32 bits as memory address and single memory address is represented by one octet or 8 bits and then the maximum memory that the CPU can have is 232 octets or 4 GB. The simpler the processor the cheaper they are as they use less power.

Most of the processors are synchronous as the art design and for on assumptions about the clock signal. But these clock signals are prone to delays. So the processors need several identical clock signals are provided to avoid delay. But as the clock rate increases, the heat dissipation also increases and as a result processor needs more effective cooling techniques. So, one method deals with switching off of the clock signal to the unneeded parts that is known as clock gating. This is quite difficult to implement so it does not commonly used. Another method for and resolving the same problem deals with the removal of the clock signal completely creating asynchronous designs. In some computer processors certain part is made asynchronous and rest remains the same and these make them mortal good as embedded computers.

The processors discussed till now are referred to as sub scalar which operate and execute on a single or two instructions of data at a time. So they are not as efficient as needed.

There is a constant struggle going on to get the better performance from the scalar processors and this has led to various design methodologies that force the computer processor to behave more parallel and less linearly. Classification of these design techniques are done by two types. Instruction level parallelism in which the rate at which the iit tech instructions are executed within the processor increases. And the second type is thread level parallelism in which the number of threads to be executed simultaneously increases. Both the methods differ in the way in which they are implemented and their relative if it to press effectiveness in the performance for an application.

But not the simplest method for increasing parallelism is instruction pipelining which is used in todays computer processors. This allows more than a single instruction to be executed in a given time. But this might introduce data dependency conflict. To remove this additional circuitry is required and in turn these processors become more complex than sub scalar processors.

For the improvement in instruction pipelining further developments were done which led to super scalar processors which includes a long And instruction pipeline several execution units. So multiple instructions are read and dispatched to the dispatcher which decides upon the execution of the instructions in parallel. Then though instructions are sent to execution units from where many instructions are executed in parallel. For this the dispatcher needs to be very efficient.

Another important aspect of the computer processor is the way it deals with the vectors. This type of computer processors work for the several pieces of data as a single instruction. They work on single instruction single data and single instruction multiple data schemes.

From the invention of computers till the current era the computer processors have undergone many changes to become the processors which are available today.