Early computers such as the ENIAC had to be physically rewired to perform different tasks, which caused these machines to be called "fixed-program computers". The "central processing unit" term has been in use since as early … 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 a different part of a program. Each instruction is … 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 … See more

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. 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 … See more

Most modern CPUs have privileged modes to support operating systems and virtualization.
Cloud computing can … See more

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