la unidad central central processing unit ),
(CPUalso referred to as a central processor unit,[1] is the hardware within a computer that carries out the instructionsof a computer program by performing the basic arithmetical, logical, and
input/output operations of the system. The term has been in use in the computer industry at least since the early 1960s.
[2] The form,
design, and implementation of CPUs have changed over the course of their history, but their fundamental operation remains much the same.
In older computers, CPUs require one or more
printed circuit boards. With the invention of the
microprocessor, a CPU could be contained within a single
silicon chip. The first computers to use microprocessors were
personal computers and small workstations. Since the 1970s the microprocessor class of CPUs has almost completely overtaken all other CPU implementations, to the extent that even
mainframe computers use one or more microprocessors. Modern microprocessors are large scale
integrated circuits in packages typically less than four centimeters square, with hundreds of connecting pins.
A computer can have more than one CPU; this is called
multiprocessing. Some microprocessors can contain multiple CPUs on a single chip; those microprocessors are called
multi-core processors.
Two typical components of a CPU are the
arithmetic logic unit (ALU), which performs arithmetic and logical operations, and the
control unit (CU), which extracts instructions from
memory and decodes and executes them, calling on the ALU when necessary.
Not all computational systems rely on a central processing unit. An array processor or vector processor has multiple parallel computing elements, with no one unit considered the "center". In the distributed computing model, problems are solved by a distributed interconnected set of processors.