What is Hardware?
Computer hardware is the physical components of a computer system.
These are the parts of the computer that you can actually touch. Some of the main internal hardware components of a computer are shown below.
What is a CPU?
CPU stands for Central Processing Unit.
The CPU is sometimes referred to as a the‘brain’ of the computer.
Your brain controls your body and allows you to do calculations.
The CPU does a similar job in the computer.
Motherboard:
The CPU is small enough to fit in your palm and is inserted into the Motherboard.
The Motherboard is a circuit board that allows other devices to be connected to(e.g. CPU, RAM, ROM, Video Card, Sound Card,HDMI wires, USB wires)
CPU Purpose:
The job of the CPU us to process Data and instructions i.e. Carry them out.
It does this by performing the Fetch, Decode and Execute (FDE) Cycle millions / billions of times per second.
CPU Performance
The performance of the CPU refers to how fast it can perform the fetch decode execute cycle. The following factors affect the performance of the CPU which in turn affect how fast a program or game may run:
Modern CPUs perform at around 3 – 6 Ghz.
Rewind 40 years and CPUs usually ran around 8 Mhz.
Modern CPUs generally have 4 – 16 cores.
Rewind 40 years and CPUs all had only 1 core.
Modern CPUs generally have several MBs of cache memory.
Rewind 40 years and CPUs generally didnt use cache at all.