Almost everyone knows that the main thing in a computerelement 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 believe 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 work of the CPU.
Central processor (CPU or in EnglishCPU version is the heart of any computer system. All computational operations are assigned to it, and not only arithmetic or floating-point calculations (changing mantissa), but also logical ones.
The processor itself is a small square plate (chip), inside which there are millions of transistors. Sometimes this device is also called an integrated microcircuit.
If we talk about how the processor Intelor its competitor AMD, you need to see how these chips are arranged. The first microprocessor (by the way, it is 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, that is, he had a 4-bit architecture.
Modern processors, like the firstborn, are basedon 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 the processors, the main components are cores, buses and functional particles, called revisions.
Like any other device, the processor is characterized by certain parameters, which, answering the question of how the processor works, cannot be ignored. First of all it is:
For now let's stop at 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 cycles per second. Clock frequency is measured in MHz or GHz. The higher it is, the more operations the device can perform.
At what frequency does the processor work, you can find outfrom its stated characteristics or view information in the system information. But in the process of processing commands, the frequency can change, and during acceleration (overlocking) it can increase to extreme limits. Thus, the claimed clock frequency is only an average indicator.
The number of cores - an indicator that determines the numbercomputing centers of the processor (not to be confused with threads - the number of cores and threads may not coincide). Due to this distribution, it is possible to redirect operations to other cores, thereby increasing overall performance.
Now a little about the structure of executable commands. If you look at how the processor works, you need to be clear that any team has two components - operational and operand.
The operating part indicates that it shouldexecute the computer system at the moment, the operand determines what the processor should work on. In addition, the processor core may contain two computing centers (container, stream), which divide the execution of the command into several stages:
Today, separate caching is used in the form of using two levels of cache memory, which makes it possible to avoid interception by two or more commands to access one of the memory blocks.
Processors by the type of command processing are divided into linear (execution of commands in the order of the order of their recording), cyclic and branching (execution of instructions after processing the branch conditions).
Among the main functions assigned to the processor, in the sense of executable commands or instructions, there are three main tasks:
In this process, suchcomponents like bus and channel read and write, which are connected to storage devices. ROM contains a constant set of bytes. First, the address bus requests a certain byte from the ROM, then sends it to the data bus, after which the reading channel changes its state and the ROM provides the requested byte.
But processors can not only read data fromRAM, but also record them. In this case, the recording channel is used. But if you look at it, by and large modern computers could theoretically do without RAM, since modern microcontrollers are able to place the necessary data bytes directly into the memory of the processor chip itself. But you can not do without the ROM.
Among other things, the system start is started from the hardware testing mode (BIOS commands), and only then control is transferred to the bootable operating system.
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 when you need to look atCPU utilization rate at a certain point. This can be done from the standard Task Manager (in front of any process, it is indicated how many percent of the processor load it gives). To visually determine this parameter, you can use the performance tab, where change tracking occurs in real time. Extended parameters can be seen with the help of special programs, for example, CPU-Z.
In addition, you can use multiple processor cores using the system configuration (msconfig) and additional boot options.
Finally, a few words about the problems.Here, many users often ask, they say, why the processor is working, and 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 first tested, and only then everything else is tested. Perhaps the problem lies just in the graphics chip processor (all modern video accelerators have their own graphics processors).
Но на примере функционирования человеческого the body needs to understand that in case of cardiac arrest the whole body dies. So with computers. The processor does not work - the entire computer system "dies".
