Computer processing is an action or series of actions that a microprocessor, also known as a central processing unit (CPU), performs in a computer when it receives information. The CPU is a type of electronic “brain” for a computer system and executes a series of instructions that work with software programs installed on a computer’s hard drive and loaded into random access memory (RAM). Although modern computer systems have become much faster and more complex than their earlier counterparts, they still perform the same basic type of computer processing.
A RAM card, which is used in computer processing.
At their basic level of operation, CPUs are made up of a set of transistors that, through a series of binary electrical states of 1 and 0, or “on” and “off” states, perform mathematical and logical operations that, together , add to the processing power of the computer. Instructions given to a CPU by a software program change the states of these transistors to perform calculations for the software program. These results are normally sent back to RAM for use by the software program.
Central processing unit of a computer.
There are four distinct states that processing goes through to produce meaningful data output for any program. These states are commonly known as get, decode, execute, and write back. Fetch is the first state in which the computer accesses its memory to retrieve instructions, which are always a series of numbers represented by binary code. Binary code is a series of eight bits of digits (strings of 1’s and 0’s) that together represent a “byte” of data.
Computer processing is usually performed based on information received from software installed on the computer’s hard drive.
After receiving these instructions, the computer processing decodes them. That is, the instructions are now divided into significant parts or series of bytes by the control unit (CU) of the CPU. These instructions are then executed by the CU.
When the instructions are complex mathematical calculations, the CPU uses its arithmetic logic unit (ALU) to perform them. In the final step of computer processing, a rewrite of the data takes place. It is piped back into computer memory for use by the software program, or it can be stored in memory registers within the CPU itself for later use by the program.
These four processing steps run through the CPU continuously whenever a software program is loaded into memory and executed on the computer itself. These cycles of CPU processing power are continually increasing in speed as computing systems become more advanced, with computers now capable of gigahertz processing cycles. A computer processing cycle of one gigahertz is equivalent to a billion instruction sets executed by the CPU every second.
A computer processor is also called a microprocessor or chip.
