Central Processing Unit
Learn how the central processing unit (CPU) serves as the core of computer operations. Understand the roles of the control unit and arithmetic logic unit in fetching, decoding, and executing instructions. Discover how registers and program counters manage instruction flow to perform data processing inside a CPU.
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The central processing unit (CPU) takes data from the main memory, processes it, and returns the modified data into the main memory. It comprises two subunits called the control unit (CU) and the arithmetic logic unit (ALU). As the name suggests, the arithmetic logic unit processes the data, whereas the control unit controls data flow to and from the main memory.
Control unit
The control unit coordinates the activities of all parts of a processor to ensure the desired results. It receives data from the main memory which it stores inside the
One of the registers, called the program counter, contains the address of the current instruction in the main memory. Once the current instruction is completed, the value of the program counter is incremented by one. A program counter with the value of 2 is shown in the ...
