Early computers such as the ENIAC had to be physically rewired to perform different tasks, which caused these … See more

The fundamental operation of most CPUs, regardless of the physical form they take, is to execute a sequence of stored instructions that is called a program. The instructions to be executed are kept in some kind of computer … See more

Hardwired into a CPU's circuitry is a set of basic operations it can perform, called an instruction set. Such operations may involve, for example, adding or subtracting two numbers, comparing two numbers, or jumping to … See more

Most modern CPUs have privileged modes to support operating systems and virtualization.
Cloud computing can use virtualization to provide virtual central processing units (vCPUs) fo… See more

The performance or speed of a processor depends on, among many other factors, the clock rate (generally given in multiples of hertz) and the instructions per clock (IPC), which together are the factors for the instruction… See more

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1. ^ Integrated circuits are now used to implement all CPUs, except for a few machines designed to withstand large electromagnetic pulses, say from a nuclear weapon.
2. ^ The so-called "von Neumann" memo exp… See more