2.1.2. The processor
The processor, also known as a CPU or Central Processing Unit, is the heart of the
computer, whether it is a desktop machine, a server, or a laptop. All data are processed in
it.
When the processor is composed of only one chip, it is called a microprocessor. There
are a number of different types of processors available on the market nowadays. The
microprocessor may be a Pentium from Intel Corporation, a K6 from AMD, a PowerPC,
a Sparc or any of the many other brands and types of microprocessors, but they all do
approximately the same thing in approximately the same way.
These different microprocessors may vary in terms of price and performance.
The first microprocessor was the Intel 4004, introduced in 1971 to power one of the first
portable electronic calculators. All it could do was add and subtract four bits at a time.
Before the 4004, engineers built computers either from collections of chips or from
discrete components (that is, transistors wired one at a time).
The first microprocessor used in the home computer was the Intel 8080 which was a
complete 8-bit microprocessor introduced in 1974. The Intel 8088 was introduced in
1979 and incorporated into the IBM PC, which first appeared around 1982, and this
started the era of home computing.
The PC market moved from the Intel 8088 to the new Intel Pentium-III through the
80286, the 80386, the 80486, the Pentium and the Pentium-II. All of these are
improvements on the basic design of the 8088. For example, the new Pentiums-IIIs can
execute any piece of code that ran on the original 8088, but runs about 3,000 times faster.
The following table, compiled from The Intel Microprocessor Quick Reference Guide,
helps to understand the differences between the different processors that Intel has
introduced over the years.
Name
8080
8088
80286
Date Transistors
Microns
Clock speed Data width
MIPS
1974 6,000
6
2 MHz
8
0.64 MIPS
1979 29,000
3
5 MHz
16 bits,
0.33 MIPS
8 bit bus
1982 134,000
1.5
6 MHz
16 bits
1 MIPS
80386
1985
275,000
1.5
16 MHz
32 bits
5 MIPS
80486
Pentium
1989
1993
1,200,000
3,100,000
1
0.8
25 MHz
60 MHz
20 MIPS
100 MIPS
Pentium II
1997
7,500,000
0.35
233 MHz
Pentium III
1999
9,500,000
0.25
450 MHz
32 bits
32 bits,
64 bit bus
32 bits,
64 bit bus
32 bits,
64 bit bus
400 MIPS?
1,000 MIPS?
Figure 2-8: Intel microprocessors
Information about this table:
First home computers
First IBM PC
IBM ATs. Up to 2.66 MIPS at
12 MHz
Eventually 33 MHz, 11.4
MIPS
Eventually 50 MHz, 41 MIPS
Eventually 200 MHz
Eventually
MIPS?
450
MHz,
800
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The date is the year that the processor was first introduced. Many processors are
re-introduced at higher clock speeds for many years after the original release date.
Transistors is the number of transistors on the chip. It can be seen that the
number of transistors on a single chip has risen steadily over the years.
Microns is the width, in microns, of the smallest wire on the chip. For
comparison, a human hair is 100 microns thick. As the feature size on the chip
goes down, the number of transistors rises.
Clock speed is the maximum rate that the chip can be clocked.
Data Width is the width of the ALU.
MIPS stands for Millions of Instructions Per Second, and is a rough measure of
the performance of a CPU. Modern CPUs can do so many different things that
MIPS ratings lose a lot of their meaning, but a general sense of the relative power
of the CPUs from this column can be deduced.
2.1.2.1. The Chip
A chip is also called an integrated circuit. Generally it is a small, thin piece of silicon
onto which the transistors have been etched. A chip might be as large as an inch on a side
and can contain as many as 10 million transistors. Simple processors might consist of a
few thousand transistors etched onto a chip just a few millimetres square.
Figure 2-9: The Pentium II chip
2.1.2.2. Inside a Microprocessor
The main components of the microprocessor are the Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU)
and the Control Unit (CU). The CU directs electronic signals between the memory and
the ALU as well as between the CPU and I/O devices. The ALU performs arithmetic and
comparison operations.
A microprocessor executes machine instructions that tell it what to do. Based on the
instructions, a microprocessor does three basic things:
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

The ALU (Arithmetic/Logic Unit) can perform mathematical operations like
addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
It can move data from one memory location to another
It can make decisions and jump to a new set of instructions based on those
decisions.
All the sophisticated things a microprocessor does can be decomposed in terms of these
three basic activities.
2.1.2.3. Microprocessor Instructions
Even a simple microprocessor has a quite large set of instructions that it can perform. The
collection of instructions is implemented as bit patterns, known as opcodes, each of
which has a different meaning when loaded into the instruction register. Since humans
are not good at remembering bit patterns, a set of short words or mnemonics, is defined
to represent the different bit patterns. This collection of words is called the assembly
language of the processor. An assembler can translate the words into their bit patterns
very easily, and then the output of the assembler is placed in memory for the
microprocessor to execute.
The instruction decoder needs to turn each of the opcodes into a set of signals that drive
the different components inside the microprocessor. Consider the ADD instruction as an
example:



During the first clock cycle the instruction is loaded.
During the second clock cycle the ADD instruction is decoded.
During the third clock cycle, the program counter is incremented and the
instruction executed.
This is known as the Fetch-Execute cycle of the microprocessor. Every instruction can
be broken down as a set of sequenced operations like the above. Some instructions take 2
or 3 clock cycles while others take 5 or 6 clock cycles.
2.1.2.4. Trends in Microprocessor Design
The number of transistors available has a huge effect on the performance of a processor
More transistors also allow a technology called pipelining. In a pipelined architecture,
instruction execution overlaps. So even though it takes 5 clock cycles to execute each
instruction, there can be 5 instructions in various stages of execution simultaneously. So
it seems that one instruction completes every clock cycle.
Many modern processors have multiple instruction decoders, each with its own pipeline.
This allows multiple instruction streams, which means that more than one instruction can
be completed during each clock cycle. This technique can be quite complex to
implement, so it takes lots of transistors.
The trend in processor design has been toward full 32-bit ALUs with fast floating point
processors built in and pipelined execution with multiple instruction streams. There has
also been a tendency toward special instructions (like the MMX instructions designed for
Multimedia purposes) that make certain operations particularly efficient. There has also
been the addition of hardware virtual memory support and L1 caching on the processor
chip. All of these trends push up the transistor count, leading to the multi-million
transistor microprocessors available today and these processors can execute about one
billion instructions per second.
2.1.2.5. Data representation
Inside the computer, data are represented using the binary system. This system or base
consists of only two digits: 0 and 1. In the computer these digits are represented by the
states of electrical circuits: a low state stands for 0 and a high state for 1. One binary digit
is known as a bit and 8 bits make a byte.
Any character can be represented by a combination of binary digits. A byte can represent
up to 256 different characters.
Memory capacity is expressed in terms of Megabytes (or MB). One MB is 220 Bytes and
is roughly equal to 1 million Bytes. The RAM of a computer is expressed in terms of MB
nowadays.
The Kilobyte (or KB) is 210 Bytes or roughly 1 000 Bytes. The cache of a computer is
expressed in terms of KB.
The Gigabyte (GB) is 230 Bytes. It is used to express Hard Disk capacity.
The examples used are just to give an idea of the capacity of the different mediums in a
computer. We can express the size of any storage device in terms of any unit.
There are a number of different binary systems:
ASCII: The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is the main system
used in microcomputers.
EBCDIC: The Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code was developed by
IBM and is used in large computers.
Unicode: This is a sixteen-bit code. It can represent up to 2 16 different characters. It can
support languages such as Chinese and Japanese, which have a very large set of
characters.
The electrical signal corresponding to a character is generated when the corresponding
key is pressed on the keyboard. Since there can be noise on the lines from the keyboard to
the processor, the signal can be corrupted. So a ninth bit, the parity bit, is added before
transmission to detect errors. There are two types of parity bit:

Even parity bit: The bit is added in such a way that the total number of 1 in the
signal is even. Any error is detected at reception, and in case of error, the signal
has to be sent again.

Odd parity bit: The total number of 1 has to be odd.