Central processing unit

A central processing unit (CPU)—also called a central processor or

main processor—is the most important processor in a given computer.
Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such
as arithmetic, logic, controlling, and input/output (I/O) operations. This
role contrasts with that of external components, such as main memory
and I/O circuitry,[1] and specialized coprocessors such as graphics
processing units (GPUs).

The form, design, and implementation of CPUs have changed over time,
but their fundamental operation remains almost unchanged. Principal
components of a CPU include the arithmetic–logic unit (ALU) that
performs arithmetic and logic operations, processor registers that supply
operands to the ALU and store the results of ALU operations, and a A central processing unit (CPU)
control unit that orchestrates the fetching (from memory), decoding and made by Intel: An Intel Core
execution (of instructions) by directing the coordinated operations of the i9-14900K
ALU, registers, and other components. Modern CPUs devote a
lot of semiconductor area to caches and instruction-level
parallelism to increase performance and to CPU modes to
support operating systems and virtualization.

Most modern CPUs are implemented on integrated circuit (IC)

microprocessors, with one or more CPUs on a single IC chip.
Microprocessor chips with multiple CPUs are multi-core
processors. The individual physical CPUs, processor cores, can
also be multithreaded to support CPU-level multithreading.[2]

An IC that contains a CPU may also contain memory,

peripheral interfaces, and other components of a computer; such
integrated devices are variously called microcontrollers or Inside a central processing unit: The
systems on a chip (SoC). integrated circuit of Intel's Xeon 3060,
first manufactured in 2006

History
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".[3] The "central processing unit" term has been in use since
as early as 1955.[4][5] Since the term "CPU" is generally defined as a device for software (computer program)
execution, the earliest devices that could rightly be called CPUs came with the advent of the stored-program
computer.

The idea of a stored-program computer had been already present in the design of J. Presper Eckert and John
William Mauchly's ENIAC, but was initially omitted so that ENIAC could be finished sooner.[6] On June 30,
1945, before ENIAC was made, mathematician John von Neumann distributed a paper entitled First Draft of a
Report on the EDVAC. It was the outline of a stored-program computer that would eventually be completed in
August 1949.[7] EDVAC was designed to perform a certain number of instructions (or operations) of various
types. Significantly, the programs written for EDVAC were to be stored
in high-speed computer memory rather than specified by the physical
wiring of the computer.[8] This overcame a severe limitation of ENIAC,
which was the considerable time and effort required to reconfigure the
computer to perform a new task.[9] With von Neumann's design, the
program that EDVAC ran could be changed simply by changing the
contents of the memory. EDVAC was not the first stored-program
computer; the Manchester Baby, which was a small-scale experimental
stored-program computer, ran its first program on 21 June 1948[10] and
the Manchester Mark 1 ran its first program during the night of 16–17
June 1949.[11]

Early CPUs were custom designs used as part of a larger and sometimes
distinctive computer.[12] However, this method of designing custom
CPUs for a particular application has largely given way to the
development of multi-purpose processors produced in large quantities. EDVAC, one of the first stored-
This standardization began in the era of discrete transistor mainframes program computers
and minicomputers, and has rapidly accelerated with the popularization
of the integrated circuit (IC). The IC has allowed increasingly complex CPUs to be designed and manufactured
to tolerances on the order of nanometers.[13] Both the miniaturization and standardization of CPUs have
increased the presence of digital devices in modern life far beyond the limited application of dedicated
computing machines. Modern microprocessors appear in electronic devices ranging from automobiles[14] to
cellphones,[15] and sometimes even in toys.[16][17]

While von Neumann is most often credited with the design of the stored-program computer because of his
design of EDVAC, and the design became known as the von Neumann architecture, others before him, such as
Konrad Zuse, had suggested and implemented similar ideas.[18] The so-called Harvard architecture of the
Harvard Mark I, which was completed before EDVAC,[19][20] also used a stored-program design using
punched paper tape rather than electronic memory.[21] The key difference between the von Neumann and
Harvard architectures is that the latter separates the storage and treatment of CPU instructions and data, while
the former uses the same memory space for both.[22] Most modern CPUs are primarily von Neumann in
design, but CPUs with the Harvard architecture are seen as well, especially in embedded applications; for
instance, the Atmel AVR microcontrollers are Harvard-architecture processors.[23]

Relays and vacuum tubes (thermionic tubes) were commonly used as switching elements;[24][25] a useful
computer requires thousands or tens of thousands of switching devices. The overall speed of a system is
dependent on the speed of the switches. Vacuum-tube computers such as EDVAC tended to average eight hours
between failures, whereas relay computers—such as the slower but earlier Harvard Mark I—failed very
rarely.[5] In the end, tube-based CPUs became dominant because the significant speed advantages afforded
generally outweighed the reliability problems. Most of these early synchronous CPUs ran at low clock rates
compared to modern microelectronic designs. Clock signal frequencies ranging from 100 kHz to 4 MHz were
very common at this time, limited largely by the speed of the switching devices they were built with.[26]

Transistor CPUs
The design complexity of CPUs increased as various technologies
facilitated the building of smaller and more reliable electronic devices.
The first such improvement came with the advent of the transistor.
Transistorized CPUs during the 1950s and 1960s no longer had to be
built out of bulky, unreliable, and fragile switching elements, like
vacuum tubes and relays.[27] With this improvement, more complex and
reliable CPUs were built onto one or several printed circuit boards
containing discrete (individual) components.

In 1964, IBM introduced its IBM System/360 computer architecture that

was used in a series of computers capable of running the same programs
with different speeds and performances.[28] This was significant at a
time when most electronic computers were incompatible with one IBM PowerPC 604e processor
another, even those made by the same manufacturer. To facilitate this
improvement, IBM used the concept of a microprogram (often called
"microcode"), which still sees widespread use in modern CPUs.[29] The System/360 architecture was so
popular that it dominated the mainframe computer market for decades and left a legacy that is continued by
similar modern computers like the IBM zSeries.[30][31] In 1965, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)
introduced another influential computer aimed at the scientific and research markets—the PDP-8.[32]

Transistor-based computers had several distinct advantages over their

predecessors. Aside from facilitating increased reliability and lower
power consumption, transistors also allowed CPUs to operate at much
higher speeds because of the short switching time of a transistor in
comparison to a tube or relay.[33] The increased reliability and
dramatically increased speed of the switching elements, which were
almost exclusively transistors by this time; CPU clock rates in the tens of
megahertz were easily obtained during this period.[34] Additionally,
while discrete transistor and IC CPUs were in heavy usage, new high-
performance designs like single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) vector
processors began to appear.[35] These early experimental designs later
gave rise to the era of specialized supercomputers like those made by
Cray Inc and Fujitsu Ltd.[35]

Small-scale integration CPUs Fujitsu board with SPARC64

VIIIfx processors
During this period, a method of manufacturing many interconnected
transistors in a compact space was developed. The integrated circuit (IC)
allowed a large number of transistors to be manufactured on a single semiconductor-based die, or "chip". At
first, only very basic non-specialized digital circuits such as NOR gates were miniaturized into ICs.[36] CPUs
based on these "building block" ICs are generally referred to as "small-scale integration" (SSI) devices. SSI ICs,
such as the ones used in the Apollo Guidance Computer, usually contained up to a few dozen transistors. To
build an entire CPU out of SSI ICs required thousands of individual chips, but still consumed much less space
and power than earlier discrete transistor designs.[37]
IBM's System/370, follow-on to the System/360, used SSI ICs rather
than Solid Logic Technology discrete-transistor modules.[38][39] DEC's
PDP-8/I and KI10 PDP-10 also switched from the individual transistors
used by the PDP-8 and PDP-10 to SSI ICs,[40] and their extremely
popular PDP-11 line was originally built with SSI ICs, but was
eventually implemented with LSI components once these became
practical.

Large-scale integration CPUs CPU, core memory and

external bus interface of a DEC
Lee Boysel published influential articles, including a 1967 "manifesto", PDP-8/I, made of medium-scale
which described how to build the equivalent of a 32-bit mainframe integrated circuits
computer from a relatively small number of large-scale integration
circuits (LSI).[41][42] The only way to build LSI chips, which are chips
with a hundred or more gates, was to build them using a metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) semiconductor
manufacturing process (either PMOS logic, NMOS logic, or CMOS logic). However, some companies
continued to build processors out of bipolar transistor–transistor logic (TTL) chips because bipolar junction
transistors were faster than MOS chips up until the 1970s (a few companies such as Datapoint continued to
build processors out of TTL chips until the early 1980s).[42] In the 1960s, MOS ICs were slower and initially
considered useful only in applications that required low power.[43][44] Following the development of silicon-
gate MOS technology by Federico Faggin at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968, MOS ICs largely replaced
bipolar TTL as the standard chip technology in the early 1970s.[45]

As the microelectronic technology advanced, an increasing number of transistors were placed on ICs,
decreasing the number of individual ICs needed for a complete CPU. MSI and LSI ICs increased transistor
counts to hundreds, and then thousands. By 1968, the number of ICs required to build a complete CPU had been
reduced to 24 ICs of eight different types, with each IC containing roughly 1000 MOSFETs.[46] In stark
contrast with its SSI and MSI predecessors, the first LSI implementation of the PDP-11 contained a CPU
composed of only four LSI integrated circuits.[47]

Microprocessors

Since microprocessors were first introduced they have almost completely overtaken all other central processing
unit implementation methods. The first commercially available microprocessor, made in 1971, was the Intel
4004, and the first widely used microprocessor, made in 1974, was the Intel 8080. Mainframe and
minicomputer manufacturers of the time launched proprietary IC development programs to upgrade their older
computer architectures, and eventually produced instruction set compatible microprocessors that were
backward-compatible with their older hardware and software. Combined with the advent and eventual success
of the ubiquitous personal computer, the term CPU is now applied almost exclusively[a] to microprocessors.
Several CPUs (denoted cores) can be combined in a single processing chip.[48]

Previous generations of CPUs were implemented as discrete components and numerous small integrated circuits
(ICs) on one or more circuit boards.[49] Microprocessors, on the other hand, are CPUs manufactured on a very
small number of ICs; usually just one.[50] The overall smaller CPU size, as a result of being implemented on a
single die, means faster switching time because of physical factors like decreased gate parasitic
capacitance.[51][52] This has allowed synchronous microprocessors to have clock rates ranging from tens of
megahertz to several gigahertz. Additionally, the ability to construct
exceedingly small transistors on an IC has increased the complexity and
number of transistors in a single CPU many fold. This widely observed
trend is described by Moore's law, which had proven to be a fairly
accurate predictor of the growth of CPU (and other IC) complexity until
2016.[53][54]

While the complexity, size, construction and general form of CPUs have
changed enormously since 1950,[55] the basic design and function has
not changed much at all. Almost all common CPUs today can be very Die of an Intel 80486DX2
accurately described as von Neumann stored-program machines.[56][b] microprocessor (actual size: 12
As Moore's law no longer holds, concerns have arisen about the limits of × 6.75 mm) in its packaging
integrated circuit transistor technology. Extreme miniaturization of
electronic gates is causing the effects of phenomena like
electromigration and subthreshold leakage to become much more
significant.[58][59] These newer concerns are among the many factors
causing researchers to investigate new methods of computing such as the
quantum computer, as well as to expand the use of parallelism and other
methods that extend the usefulness of the classical von Neumann model.

Operation Intel Core i5 CPU on a Vaio E

series laptop motherboard (on
The fundamental operation of most CPUs, regardless of the physical the right, beneath the heat
form they take, is to execute a sequence of stored instructions that is pipe)
called a program. The instructions to be executed are kept in some kind
of computer memory. Nearly all CPUs follow the fetch, decode and
execute steps in their operation, which are collectively known as the
instruction cycle.

After the execution of an instruction, the entire process repeats, with the
next instruction cycle normally fetching the next-in-sequence instruction
because of the incremented value in the program counter. If a jump
instruction was executed, the program counter will be modified to
contain the address of the instruction that was jumped to and program
execution continues normally. In more complex CPUs, multiple
instructions can be fetched, decoded and executed simultaneously. This
section describes what is generally referred to as the "classic RISC
pipeline", which is quite common among the simple CPUs used in many
electronic devices (often called microcontrollers). It largely ignores the
important role of CPU cache, and therefore the access stage of the
pipeline.

Some instructions manipulate the program counter rather than producing Inside of a laptop, with the
result data directly; such instructions are generally called "jumps" and CPU removed from socket
facilitate program behavior like loops, conditional program execution
(through the use of a conditional jump), and existence of functions.[c] In
some processors, some other instructions change the state of bits in a "flags" register. These flags can be used to
influence how a program behaves, since they often indicate the outcome of various operations. For example, in
such processors a "compare" instruction evaluates two values and sets or clears bits in the flags register to
indicate which one is greater or whether they are equal; one of these flags could then be used by a later jump
instruction to determine program flow.

Fetch

Fetch involves retrieving an instruction (which is represented by a number or sequence of numbers) from
program memory. The instruction's location (address) in program memory is determined by the program counter
(PC; called the "instruction pointer" in Intel x86 microprocessors), which stores a number that identifies the
address of the next instruction to be fetched. After an instruction is fetched, the PC is incremented by the length
of the instruction so that it will contain the address of the next instruction in the sequence.[d] Often, the
instruction to be fetched must be retrieved from relatively slow memory, causing the CPU to stall while waiting
for the instruction to be returned. This issue is largely addressed in modern processors by caches and pipeline
architectures (see below).

Decode

The instruction that the CPU fetches from memory determines what the CPU will do. In the decode step,
performed by binary decoder circuitry known as the instruction decoder, the instruction is converted into
signals that control other parts of the CPU.

The way in which the instruction is interpreted is defined by the CPU's instruction set architecture (ISA).[e]
Often, one group of bits (that is, a "field") within the instruction, called the opcode, indicates which operation is
to be performed, while the remaining fields usually provide supplemental information required for the
operation, such as the operands. Those operands may be specified as a constant value (called an immediate
value), or as the location of a value that may be a processor register or a memory address, as determined by
some addressing mode.

In some CPU designs the instruction decoder is implemented as a hardwired, unchangeable binary decoder
circuit. In others, a microprogram is used to translate instructions into sets of CPU configuration signals that are
applied sequentially over multiple clock pulses. In some cases the memory that stores the microprogram is
rewritable, making it possible to change the way in which the CPU decodes instructions.

Execute

After the fetch and decode steps, the execute step is performed. Depending on the CPU architecture, this may
consist of a single action or a sequence of actions. During each action, control signals electrically enable or
disable various parts of the CPU so they can perform all or part of the desired operation. The action is then
completed, typically in response to a clock pulse. Very often the results are written to an internal CPU register
for quick access by subsequent instructions. In other cases results may be written to slower, but less expensive
and higher capacity main memory.

For example, if an instruction that performs addition is to be executed, registers containing operands (numbers
to be summed) are activated, as are the parts of the arithmetic logic unit (ALU) that perform addition. When the
clock pulse occurs, the operands flow from the source registers into the ALU, and the sum appears at its output.
On subsequent clock pulses, other components are enabled (and disabled) to move the output (the sum of the
operation) to storage (e.g., a register or memory). If the resulting sum is too large (i.e., it is larger than the
ALU's output word size), an arithmetic overflow flag will be set, influencing the next operation.

Structure and implementation

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 represented by a
unique combination of bits, known as the
machine language opcode. While processing an
instruction, the CPU decodes the opcode (via a
binary decoder) into control signals, which
orchestrate the behavior of the CPU. A complete
machine language instruction consists of an
opcode and, in many cases, additional bits that
specify arguments for the operation (for example, Block diagram of a basic uniprocessor-CPU computer.
the numbers to be summed in the case of an Black lines indicate data flow, whereas red lines
addition operation). Going up the complexity indicate control flow; arrows indicate flow directions.
scale, a machine language program is a collection
of machine language instructions that the CPU
executes.

The actual mathematical operation for each instruction is performed by a combinational logic circuit within the
CPU's processor known as the arithmetic–logic unit or ALU. In general, a CPU executes an instruction by
fetching it from memory, using its ALU to perform an operation, and then storing the result to memory. Besides
the instructions for integer mathematics and logic operations, various other machine instructions exist, such as
those for loading data from memory and storing it back, branching operations, and mathematical operations on
floating-point numbers performed by the CPU's floating-point unit (FPU).[60]

Control unit

The control unit (CU) is a component of the CPU that directs the operation of the processor. It tells the
computer's memory, arithmetic and logic unit and input and output devices how to respond to the instructions
that have been sent to the processor.

It directs the operation of the other units by providing timing and control signals. Most computer resources are
managed by the CU. It directs the flow of data between the CPU and the other devices. John von Neumann
included the control unit as part of the von Neumann architecture. In modern computer designs, the control unit
is typically an internal part of the CPU with its overall role and operation unchanged since its introduction.[61]

Arithmetic logic unit

The arithmetic logic unit (ALU) is a digital circuit within the
processor that performs integer arithmetic and bitwise logic
operations. The inputs to the ALU are the data words to be
operated on (called operands), status information from
previous operations, and a code from the control unit
indicating which operation to perform. Depending on the
instruction being executed, the operands may come from
internal CPU registers, external memory, or constants
generated by the ALU itself.
Symbolic representation of an ALU and
When all input signals have settled and propagated through its input and output signals
the ALU circuitry, the result of the performed operation
appears at the ALU's outputs. The result consists of both a
data word, which may be stored in a register or memory, and status information that is typically stored in a
special, internal CPU register reserved for this purpose.

Modern CPUs typically contain more than one ALU to improve performance.

Address generation unit

The address generation unit (AGU), sometimes also called the address computation unit (ACU),[62] is an
execution unit inside the CPU that calculates addresses used by the CPU to access main memory. By having
address calculations handled by separate circuitry that operates in parallel with the rest of the CPU, the number
of CPU cycles required for executing various machine instructions can be reduced, bringing performance
improvements.

While performing various operations, CPUs need to calculate memory addresses required for fetching data from
the memory; for example, in-memory positions of array elements must be calculated before the CPU can fetch
the data from actual memory locations. Those address-generation calculations involve different integer
arithmetic operations, such as addition, subtraction, modulo operations, or bit shifts. Often, calculating a
memory address involves more than one general-purpose machine instruction, which do not necessarily decode
and execute quickly. By incorporating an AGU into a CPU design, together with introducing specialized
instructions that use the AGU, various address-generation calculations can be offloaded from the rest of the
CPU, and can often be executed quickly in a single CPU cycle.

Capabilities of an AGU depend on a particular CPU and its architecture. Thus, some AGUs implement and
expose more address-calculation operations, while some also include more advanced specialized instructions
that can operate on multiple operands at a time. Some CPU architectures include multiple AGUs so more than
one address-calculation operation can be executed simultaneously, which brings further performance
improvements due to the superscalar nature of advanced CPU designs. For example, Intel incorporates multiple
AGUs into its Sandy Bridge and Haswell microarchitectures, which increase bandwidth of the CPU memory
subsystem by allowing multiple memory-access instructions to be executed in parallel.

Memory management unit (MMU)

Many microprocessors (in smartphones and desktop, laptop, server computers) have a memory management
unit, translating logical addresses into physical RAM addresses, providing memory protection and paging
abilities, useful for virtual memory. Simpler processors, especially microcontrollers, usually don't include an
MMU.

Cache

A CPU cache[63] is a hardware cache used by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer to reduce the
average cost (time or energy) to access data from the main memory. A cache is a smaller, faster memory, closer
to a processor core, which stores copies of the data from frequently used main memory locations. Most CPUs
have different independent caches, including instruction and data caches, where the data cache is usually
organized as a hierarchy of more cache levels (L1, L2, L3, L4, etc.).

All modern (fast) CPUs (with few specialized exceptions[f]) have multiple levels of CPU caches. The first
CPUs that used a cache had only one level of cache; unlike later level 1 caches, it was not split into L1d (for
data) and L1i (for instructions). Almost all current CPUs with caches have a split L1 cache. They also have L2
caches and, for larger processors, L3 caches as well. The L2 cache is usually not split and acts as a common
repository for the already split L1 cache. Every core of a multi-core processor has a dedicated L2 cache and is
usually not shared between the cores. The L3 cache, and higher-level caches, are shared between the cores and
are not split. An L4 cache is currently uncommon, and is generally on dynamic random-access memory
(DRAM), rather than on static random-access memory (SRAM), on a separate die or chip. That was also the
case historically with L1, while bigger chips have allowed integration of it and generally all cache levels, with
the possible exception of the last level. Each extra level of cache tends to be bigger and is optimized differently.

Other types of caches exist (that are not counted towards the "cache size" of the most important caches
mentioned above), such as the translation lookaside buffer (TLB) that is part of the memory management unit
(MMU) that most CPUs have.

Caches are generally sized in powers of two: 2, 8, 16 etc. KiB or MiB (for larger non-L1) sizes, although the
IBM z13 has a 96 KiB L1 instruction cache.[64]

Clock rate

Most CPUs are synchronous circuits, which means they employ a clock signal to pace their sequential
operations. The clock signal is produced by an external oscillator circuit that generates a consistent number of
pulses each second in the form of a periodic square wave. The frequency of the clock pulses determines the rate
at which a CPU executes instructions and, consequently, the faster the clock, the more instructions the CPU will
execute each second.

To ensure proper operation of the CPU, the clock period is longer than the maximum time needed for all signals
to propagate (move) through the CPU. In setting the clock period to a value well above the worst-case
propagation delay, it is possible to design the entire CPU and the way it moves data around the "edges" of the
rising and falling clock signal. This has the advantage of simplifying the CPU significantly, both from a design
perspective and a component-count perspective. However, it also carries the disadvantage that the entire CPU
must wait on its slowest elements, even though some portions of it are much faster. This limitation has largely
been compensated for by various methods of increasing CPU parallelism (see below).
However, architectural improvements alone do not solve all of the drawbacks of globally synchronous CPUs.
For example, a clock signal is subject to the delays of any other electrical signal. Higher clock rates in
increasingly complex CPUs make it more difficult to keep the clock signal in phase (synchronized) throughout
the entire unit. This has led many modern CPUs to require multiple identical clock signals to be provided to
avoid delaying a single signal significantly enough to cause the CPU to malfunction. Another major issue, as
clock rates increase dramatically, is the amount of heat that is dissipated by the CPU. The constantly changing
clock causes many components to switch regardless of whether they are being used at that time. In general, a
component that is switching uses more energy than an element in a static state. Therefore, as clock rate
increases, so does energy consumption, causing the CPU to require more heat dissipation in the form of CPU
cooling solutions.

One method of dealing with the switching of unneeded components is called clock gating, which involves
turning off the clock signal to unneeded components (effectively disabling them). However, this is often
regarded as difficult to implement and therefore does not see common usage outside of very low-power designs.
One notable recent CPU design that uses extensive clock gating is the IBM PowerPC-based Xenon used in the
Xbox 360; this reduces the power requirements of the Xbox 360.[65]

Clockless CPUs

Another method of addressing some of the problems with a global clock signal is the removal of the clock
signal altogether. While removing the global clock signal makes the design process considerably more complex
in many ways, asynchronous (or clockless) designs carry marked advantages in power consumption and heat
dissipation in comparison with similar synchronous designs. While somewhat uncommon, entire asynchronous
CPUs have been built without using a global clock signal. Two notable examples of this are the ARM compliant
AMULET and the MIPS R3000 compatible MiniMIPS.[66]

Rather than totally removing the clock signal, some CPU designs allow certain portions of the device to be
asynchronous, such as using asynchronous ALUs in conjunction with superscalar pipelining to achieve some
arithmetic performance gains. While it is not altogether clear whether totally asynchronous designs can perform
at a comparable or better level than their synchronous counterparts, it is evident that they do at least excel in
simpler math operations. This, combined with their excellent power consumption and heat dissipation
properties, makes them very suitable for embedded computers.[67]

Voltage regulator module

Many modern CPUs have a die-integrated power managing module which regulates on-demand voltage supply
to the CPU circuitry allowing it to keep balance between performance and power consumption.

Integer range

Every CPU represents numerical values in a specific way. For example, some early digital computers
represented numbers as familiar decimal (base 10) numeral system values, and others have employed more
unusual representations such as ternary (base three). Nearly all modern CPUs represent numbers in binary form,
with each digit being represented by some two-valued physical quantity such as a "high" or "low" voltage.[g]

Related to numeric representation is the size and precision of integer numbers that a CPU can represent. In the
case of a binary CPU, this is measured by the number of bits (significant digits of a binary encoded integer) that
the CPU can process in one operation, which is commonly called word size, bit width, data path width, integer

A six-bit word containing the
binary encoded representation
of decimal value 40. Most
modern CPUs employ word
sizes that are a power of two,
for example 8, 16, 32 or 64
bits.
precision, or integer size. A CPU's integer size determines the range of
integer values on which it can it can directly operate.[h] For example, an
8-bit CPU can directly manipulate integers represented by eight bits,
which have a range of 256 (28) discrete integer values.
Integer range can also affect the number of memory locations the CPU
can directly address (an address is an integer value representing a specific
memory location). For example, if a binary CPU uses 32 bits to represent
a memory address then it can directly address 232 memory locations. To
circumvent this limitation and for various other reasons, some CPUs use
mechanisms (such as bank switching) that allow additional memory to be
addressed.

CPUs with larger word sizes require more circuitry and consequently are physically larger, cost more and
consume more power (and therefore generate more heat). As a result, smaller 4- or 8-bit microcontrollers are
commonly used in modern applications even though CPUs with much larger word sizes (such as 16, 32, 64,
even 128-bit) are available. When higher performance is required, however, the benefits of a larger word size
(larger data ranges and address spaces) may outweigh the disadvantages. A CPU can have internal data paths
shorter than the word size to reduce size and cost. For example, even though the IBM System/360 instruction
set architecture was a 32-bit instruction set, the System/360 Model 30 and Model 40 had 8-bit data paths in the
arithmetic logical unit, so that a 32-bit add required four cycles, one for each 8 bits of the operands, and, even
though the Motorola 68000 series instruction set was a 32-bit instruction set, the Motorola 68000 and Motorola
68010 had 16-bit data paths in the arithmetic logical unit, so that a 32-bit add required two cycles.

To gain some of the advantages afforded by both lower and higher bit lengths, many instruction sets have
different bit widths for integer and floating-point data, allowing CPUs implementing that instruction set to have
different bit widths for different portions of the device. For example, the IBM System/360 instruction set was
primarily 32 bit, but supported 64-bit floating-point values to facilitate greater accuracy and range in floating-
point numbers.[29] The System/360 Model 65 had an 8-bit adder for decimal and fixed-point binary arithmetic
and a 60-bit adder for floating-point arithmetic.[68] Many later CPU designs use similar mixed bit width,
especially when the processor is meant for general-purpose use where a reasonable balance of integer and
floating-point capability is required.

Parallelism

The description of the basic operation

of a CPU offered in the previous
section describes the simplest form
that a CPU can take. This type of CPU,
usually referred to as subscalar, Model of a subscalar CPU, in which it takes fifteen clock cycles
operates on and executes one to complete three instructions
instruction on one or two pieces of
data at a time, that is less than one
instruction per clock cycle (IPC < 1).

This process gives rise to an inherent inefficiency in subscalar CPUs. Since only one instruction is executed at a
time, the entire CPU must wait for that instruction to complete before proceeding to the next instruction. As a
result, the subscalar CPU gets "hung up" on instructions which take more than one clock cycle to complete
execution. Even adding a second execution unit (see below) does not improve performance much; rather than
one pathway being hung up, now two pathways are hung up and the number of unused transistors is increased.
This design, wherein the CPU's execution resources can operate on only one instruction at a time, can only
possibly reach scalar performance (one instruction per clock cycle, IPC = 1). However, the performance is
nearly always subscalar (less than one instruction per clock cycle, IPC < 1).

Attempts to achieve scalar and better performance have resulted in a variety of design methodologies that cause
the CPU to behave less linearly and more in parallel. When referring to parallelism in CPUs, two terms are
generally used to classify these design techniques:

instruction-level parallelism (ILP), which seeks to increase the rate at which instructions are
executed within a CPU (that is, to increase the use of on-die execution resources);
task-level parallelism (TLP), which purposes to increase the number of threads or processes that a
CPU can execute simultaneously.

Each methodology differs both in the ways in which they are implemented, as well as the relative effectiveness
they afford in increasing the CPU's performance for an application.[i]

Instruction-level parallelism

One of the simplest methods for increased parallelism is

Basic five-stage pipeline. In the best case
scenario, this pipeline can sustain a completion
rate of one instruction per clock cycle.
retired.
to begin the first steps of instruction fetching and
decoding before the prior instruction finishes executing.
This is a technique known as instruction pipelining, and
is used in almost all modern general-purpose CPUs.
Pipelining allows multiple instruction to be executed at
a time by breaking the execution pathway into discrete
stages. This separation can be compared to an assembly
line, in which an instruction is made more complete at
each stage until it exits the execution pipeline and is

Pipelining does, however, introduce the possibility for a situation where the result of the previous operation is
needed to complete the next operation; a condition often termed data dependency conflict. Therefore pipelined
processors must check for these sorts of conditions and delay a portion of the pipeline if necessary. A pipelined
processor can become very nearly scalar, inhibited only by pipeline stalls (an instruction spending more than
one clock cycle in a stage).

Improvements in instruction pipelining led to further decreases in the idle time of CPU components. Designs
that are said to be superscalar include a long instruction pipeline and multiple identical execution units, such as
load–store units, arithmetic–logic units, floating-point units and address generation units.[69] In a superscalar
pipeline, instructions are read and passed to a dispatcher, which decides whether or not the instructions can be
executed in parallel (simultaneously). If so, they are dispatched to execution units, resulting in their
simultaneous execution. In general, the number of instructions that a superscalar CPU will complete in a cycle
is dependent on the number of instructions it is able to dispatch simultaneously to execution units.

Most of the difficulty in the design of a superscalar CPU architecture lies in creating an effective dispatcher.
The dispatcher needs to be able to quickly determine whether instructions can be executed in parallel, as well as
dispatch them in such a way as to keep as many execution units busy as possible. This requires that the
instruction pipeline is filled as often as possible and requires significant amounts of CPU cache. It also makes
hazard-avoiding techniques like branch prediction,
speculative execution, register renaming, out-of-order
execution and transactional memory crucial to
maintaining high levels of performance. By attempting
to predict which branch (or path) a conditional
instruction will take, the CPU can minimize the number
of times that the entire pipeline must wait until a
conditional instruction is completed. Speculative
execution often provides modest performance increases
by executing portions of code that may not be needed
after a conditional operation completes. Out-of-order
execution somewhat rearranges the order in which A simple superscalar pipeline. By fetching and
instructions are executed to reduce delays due to data dispatching two instructions at a time, a
dependencies. Also in case of single instruction stream, maximum of two instructions per clock cycle
multiple data stream, a case when a lot of data from the can be completed.
same type has to be processed, modern processors can
disable parts of the pipeline so that when a single instruction is executed many times, the CPU skips the fetch
and decode phases and thus greatly increases performance on certain occasions, especially in highly
monotonous program engines such as video creation software and photo processing.

When a fraction of the CPU is superscalar, the part that is not suffers a performance penalty due to scheduling
stalls. The Intel P5 Pentium had two superscalar ALUs which could accept one instruction per clock cycle each,
but its FPU could not. Thus the P5 was integer superscalar but not floating point superscalar. Intel's successor to
the P5 architecture, P6, added superscalar abilities to its floating-point features.

Simple pipelining and superscalar design increase a CPU's ILP by allowing it to execute instructions at rates
surpassing one instruction per clock cycle. Most modern CPU designs are at least somewhat superscalar, and
nearly all general purpose CPUs designed in the last decade are superscalar. In later years some of the emphasis
in designing high-ILP computers has been moved out of the CPU's hardware and into its software interface, or
instruction set architecture (ISA). The strategy of the very long instruction word (VLIW) causes some ILP to
become implied directly by the software, reducing the CPU’s work in boosting ILP and thereby reducing design
complexity.

Task-level parallelism

Another strategy of achieving performance is to execute multiple threads or processes in parallel. This area of
research is known as parallel computing.[70] In Flynn's taxonomy, this strategy is known as multiple instruction
stream, multiple data stream (MIMD).[71]

One technology used for this purpose is multiprocessing (MP).[72] The initial type of this technology is known
as symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), where a small number of CPUs share a coherent view of their memory
system. In this scheme, each CPU has additional hardware to maintain a constantly up-to-date view of memory.
By avoiding stale views of memory, the CPUs can cooperate on the same program and programs can migrate
from one CPU to another. To increase the number of cooperating CPUs beyond a handful, schemes such as non-
uniform memory access (NUMA) and directory-based coherence protocols were introduced in the 1990s. SMP
systems are limited to a small number of CPUs while NUMA systems have been built with thousands of
processors. Initially, multiprocessing was built using multiple discrete CPUs and boards to implement the
interconnect between the processors. When the processors and their interconnect are all implemented on a
single chip, the technology is known as chip-level multiprocessing (CMP) and the single chip as a multi-core
processor.
It was later recognized that finer-grain parallelism existed with a single program. A single program might have
several threads (or functions) that could be executed separately or in parallel. Some of the earliest examples of
this technology implemented input/output processing such as direct memory access as a separate thread from
the computation thread. A more general approach to this technology was introduced in the 1970s when systems
were designed to run multiple computation threads in parallel. This technology is known as multi-threading
(MT). The approach is considered more cost-effective than multiprocessing, as only a small number of
components within a CPU are replicated to support MT as opposed to the entire CPU in the case of MP. In MT,
the execution units and the memory system including the caches are shared among multiple threads. The
downside of MT is that the hardware support for multithreading is more visible to software than that of MP and
thus supervisor software like operating systems have to undergo larger changes to support MT. One type of MT
that was implemented is known as temporal multithreading, where one thread is executed until it is stalled
waiting for data to return from external memory. In this scheme, the CPU would then quickly context switch to
another thread which is ready to run, the switch often done in one CPU clock cycle, such as the UltraSPARC
T1. Another type of MT is simultaneous multithreading, where instructions from multiple threads are executed
in parallel within one CPU clock cycle.

For several decades from the 1970s to early 2000s, the focus in designing high performance general purpose
CPUs was largely on achieving high ILP through technologies such as pipelining, caches, superscalar execution,
out-of-order execution, etc. This trend culminated in large, power-hungry CPUs such as the Intel Pentium 4. By
the early 2000s, CPU designers were thwarted from achieving higher performance from ILP techniques due to
the growing disparity between CPU operating frequencies and main memory operating frequencies as well as
escalating CPU power dissipation owing to more esoteric ILP techniques.

CPU designers then borrowed ideas from commercial computing markets such as transaction processing, where
the aggregate performance of multiple programs, also known as throughput computing, was more important
than the performance of a single thread or process.

This reversal of emphasis is evidenced by the proliferation of dual and more core processor designs and notably,
Intel's newer designs resembling its less superscalar P6 architecture. Late designs in several processor families
exhibit CMP, including the x86-64 Opteron and Athlon 64 X2, the SPARC UltraSPARC T1, IBM POWER4 and
POWER5, as well as several video game console CPUs like the Xbox 360's triple-core PowerPC design, and the
PlayStation 3's 7-core Cell microprocessor.

Data parallelism

A less common but increasingly important paradigm of processors (and indeed, computing in general) deals
with data parallelism. The processors discussed earlier are all referred to as some type of scalar device.[j] As the
name implies, vector processors deal with multiple pieces of data in the context of one instruction. This
contrasts with scalar processors, which deal with one piece of data for every instruction. Using Flynn's
taxonomy, these two schemes of dealing with data are generally referred to as single instruction stream, multiple
data stream (SIMD) and single instruction stream, single data stream (SISD), respectively. The great utility in
creating processors that deal with vectors of data lies in optimizing tasks that tend to require the same operation
(for example, a sum or a dot product) to be performed on a large set of data. Some classic examples of these
types of tasks include multimedia applications (images, video and sound), as well as many types of scientific
and engineering tasks. Whereas a scalar processor must complete the entire process of fetching, decoding and
executing each instruction and value in a set of data, a vector processor can perform a single operation on a
comparatively large set of data with one instruction. This is only possible when the application tends to require
many steps which apply one operation to a large set of data.
Most early vector processors, such as the Cray-1, were associated almost exclusively with scientific research
and cryptography applications. However, as multimedia has largely shifted to digital media, the need for some
form of SIMD in general-purpose processors has become significant. Shortly after inclusion of floating-point
units started to become commonplace in general-purpose processors, specifications for and implementations of
SIMD execution units also began to appear for general-purpose processors. Some of these early SIMD
specifications – like HP's Multimedia Acceleration eXtensions (MAX) and Intel's MMX – were integer-only.
This proved to be a significant impediment for some software developers, since many of the applications that
benefit from SIMD primarily deal with floating-point numbers. Progressively, developers refined and remade
these early designs into some of the common modern SIMD specifications, which are usually associated with
one instruction set architecture (ISA). Some notable modern examples include Intel's Streaming SIMD
Extensions (SSE) and the PowerPC-related AltiVec (also known as VMX).[k]

Hardware performance counter

Many modern architectures (including embedded ones) often include hardware performance counters (HPC),
which enables low-level (instruction-level) collection, benchmarking, debugging or analysis of running
software metrics.[73][74] HPC may also be used to discover and analyze unusual or suspicious activity of the
software, such as return-oriented programming (ROP) or sigreturn-oriented programming (SROP) exploits
etc.[75] This is usually done by software-security teams to assess and find malicious binary programs.

Many major vendors (such as IBM, Intel, AMD, and Arm etc.) provide software interfaces (usually written in
C/C++) that can be used to collected data from CPUs registers in order to get metrics.[76] Operating system
vendors also provide software like perf (Linux) to record, benchmark, or trace CPU events running kernels
and applications.

Privileged modes
Most modern CPUs have privileged modes to support operating systems and virtualization.

Cloud computing can use virtualization to provide virtual central processing units[77] (vCPUs) for separate
users.[78]

A host is the virtual equivalent of a physical machine, on which a virtual system is operating.[79] When there
are several physical machines operating in tandem and managed as a whole, the grouped computing and
memory resources form a cluster. In some systems, it is possible to dynamically add and remove from a cluster.
Resources available at a host and cluster level can be partitioned into resources pools with fine granularity.

Performance
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 instructions per
second (IPS) that the CPU can perform.[80] Many reported IPS values have represented "peak" execution rates
on artificial instruction sequences with few branches, whereas realistic workloads consist of a mix of
instructions and applications, some of which take longer to execute than others. The performance of the
memory hierarchy also greatly affects processor performance, an issue barely considered in IPS calculations.
Because of these problems, various standardized tests, often called "benchmarks" for this purpose‍—‌ such as
SPECint—‌have been developed to attempt to measure the real effective performance in commonly used
applications.

Processing performance of computers is increased by using multi-core processors, which essentially is plugging
two or more individual processors (called cores in this sense) into one integrated circuit.[81] Ideally, a dual core
processor would be nearly twice as powerful as a single core processor. In practice, the performance gain is far
smaller, only about 50%, due to imperfect software algorithms and implementation.[82] Increasing the number
of cores in a processor (i.e. dual-core, quad-core, etc.) increases the workload that can be handled. This means
that the processor can now handle numerous asynchronous events, interrupts, etc. which can take a toll on the
CPU when overwhelmed. These cores can be thought of as different floors in a processing plant, with each floor
handling a different task. Sometimes, these cores will handle the same tasks as cores adjacent to them if a single
core is not enough to handle the information. Multi-core CPUs enhance a computer's ability to run several tasks
simultaneously by providing additional processing power. However, the increase in speed is not directly
proportional to the number of cores added. This is because the cores need to interact through specific channels,
and this inter-core communication consumes a portion of the available processing speed.[83]

Due to specific capabilities of modern CPUs, such as simultaneous multithreading and uncore, which involve
sharing of actual CPU resources while aiming at increased utilization, monitoring performance levels and
hardware use gradually became a more complex task.[84] As a response, some CPUs implement additional
hardware logic that monitors actual use of various parts of a CPU and provides various counters accessible to
software; an example is Intel's Performance Counter Monitor technology.[2]

See also
Technology portal

Addressing mode Graphics processing unit

AMD Accelerated Processing Unit Comparison of instruction set architectures
Complex instruction set computer Protection ring
Computer bus Reduced instruction set computer
Computer engineering Stream processing
CPU core voltage True Performance Index
CPU socket Tensor Processing Unit
Data processing unit Wait state
Digital signal processor

Notes
a. 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.
b. The so-called "von Neumann" memo expounded the idea of stored programs,[57] which for example
may be stored on punched cards, paper tape, or magnetic tape.
c. Some early computers, like the Harvard Mark I, did not support any kind of "jump" instruction,
effectively limiting the complexity of the programs they could run. It is largely for this reason that
these computers are often not considered to contain a proper CPU, despite their close similarity to
stored-program computers.
d. Since the program counter counts memory addresses and not instructions, it is incremented by the
number of memory units that the instruction word contains. In the case of simple fixed-length
instruction word ISAs, this is always the same number. For example, a fixed-length 32-bit instruction
word ISA that uses 8-bit memory words would always increment the PC by four (except in the case
of jumps). ISAs that use variable-length instruction words increment the PC by the number of
memory words corresponding to the last instruction's length.
e. Because the instruction set architecture of a CPU is fundamental to its interface and usage, it is
often used as a classification of the "type" of CPU. For example, a "PowerPC CPU" uses some variant
of the PowerPC ISA. A system can execute a different ISA by running an emulator.
f. A few specialized CPUs, accelerators or microcontrollers do not have a cache. To be fast, if
needed/wanted, they still have an on-chip scratchpad memory that has a similar function, while
software managed. In e.g. microcontrollers it can be better for hard real-time use, to have that or at
least no cache, as with one level of memory latencies of loads are predictable.
g. The physical concept of voltage is an analog one by nature, practically having an infinite range of
possible values. For the purpose of physical representation of binary numbers, two specific ranges of
voltages are defined, one for logic '0' and another for logic '1'. These ranges are dictated by design
considerations such as noise margins and characteristics of the devices used to create the CPU.
h. While a CPU's integer size sets a limit on integer ranges, this can (and often is) overcome using a
combination of software and hardware techniques. By using additional memory, software can
represent integers many magnitudes larger than the CPU can. Sometimes the CPU's instruction set
will even facilitate operations on integers larger than it can natively represent by providing
instructions to make large integer arithmetic relatively quick. This method of dealing with large
integers is slower than utilizing a CPU with higher integer size, but is a reasonable trade-off in cases
where natively supporting the full integer range needed would be cost-prohibitive. See Arbitrary-
precision arithmetic for more details on purely software-supported arbitrary-sized integers.
i. Neither ILP nor TLP is inherently superior over the other; they are simply different means by which
to increase CPU parallelism. As such, they both have advantages and disadvantages, which are often
determined by the type of software that the processor is intended to run. High-TLP CPUs are often
used in applications that lend themselves well to being split up into numerous smaller applications,
so-called "embarrassingly parallel problems". Frequently, a computational problem that can be solved
quickly with high TLP design strategies like symmetric multiprocessing takes significantly more time
on high ILP devices like superscalar CPUs, and vice versa.
j. Earlier the term scalar was used to compare the IPC count afforded by various ILP methods. Here
the term is used in the strictly mathematical sense to contrast with vectors. See scalar (mathematics)
and vector (geometric).
k. Although SSE/SSE2/SSE3 have superseded MMX in Intel's general-purpose processors, later IA-32
designs still support MMX. This is usually done by providing most of the MMX functionality with the
same hardware that supports the much more expansive SSE instruction sets.

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External links
How Microprocessors Work (http://www.howstuffworks.com/microprocessor.htm) at HowStuffWorks.
 25 Microchips that shook the world (https://spectrum.ieee.org/25-microchips-that-shook-the-world) –
an article by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Central_processing_unit&oldid=1200792612"