The central processing unit (CPU)<\/em> is the computer component that's responsible for interpreting and executing most of the commands from the computer's other hardware<\/a> and software<\/a>.<\/p>\n All sorts of devices use a CPU, including desktop, laptop, and tablet computers, smartphones, even your flat-screen television set.<\/p>\n Intel and AMD are the two most popular CPU manufacturers for desktops, laptops, and servers, while Apple, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm are big smartphone and tablet CPU makers.<\/p>\n You may see many different names used to describe the CPU, including processor, computer processor, microprocessor, central processor, and \"the brains of the computer.\"<\/p>\n Computer\u00a0monitors\u00a0or hard drives<\/a>\u00a0are sometimes very incorrectly<\/em> referred to as the CPU, but those pieces of hardware serve entirely different purposes and are in no way the same thing as the CPU.<\/p>\n A modern CPU is usually small and square, with many short, rounded, metallic connectors on its underside. Some older CPUs have pins instead of metallic connectors.<\/p>\n The CPU attaches directly to a CPU \"socket\"<\/a> (or sometimes a \"slot\") on the motherboard<\/a>. The CPU is inserted into the socket pin-side-down, and a small lever helps to secure the processor.<\/p>\n After running even a short while, modern CPUs can get very hot. To help dissipate this heat, it's almost always necessary to attach a heat sink and a fan directly on top of the CPU. Typically, these come bundled with a CPU purchase.<\/p>\n Other more advanced cooling options are also available, including water cooling kits and phase change units.<\/p>\n NOTE: <\/strong>Not all CPUs have pins on their bottom sides, but in the ones that do, the pins are easily bent. Take great care when handling, especially when you're installing them onto the motherboard.<\/p>\n The clock speed of a processor is the number of instructions it can process in any given second, measured in gigahertz (GHz).<\/p>\n For example, a CPU has a clock speed of 1 Hz if it can process one piece of instruction every second. Extrapolating this to a more real-world example: a CPU with a clock speed of 3.0 GHz can process 3 billion instructions each second.<\/p>\n Some devices use a single-core processor while others may have a dual-core (or quad-core, etc.) processor. Running two processor units working side-by-side means that the CPU can simultaneously manage twice the instructions every second, drastically improving performance.<\/p>\n Some CPUs can virtualize two cores for every one physical core that's available, a technique known as Hyper-Threading. Virtualizing <\/em>means that a CPU with only four cores can function as if it has eight, with the additional virtual CPU cores referred to as separate threads<\/em>. Physical<\/em> cores, though, do perform better than virtual<\/em> ones.<\/p>\n CPU permitting, some applications can use what's called multithreading<\/em>. If a thread is understood as a single piece of a computer process, then using multiple threads in a single CPU core means more instructions can be understood and processed at once. Some software can take advantage of this feature on more than one CPU core, which means that even more\u00a0<\/em>instructions can be processed simultaneously.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u03a0\u0397\u0393\u0397:https:\/\/www.lifewire.com\/what-is-a-cpu-2618150?utm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What Is a CPU? (Central Processing Unit) The central processing unit (CPU) is the computer component that’s responsible for interpreting and executing most of the commands from the computer’s other [ … ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":906956,"featured_media":25,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1","list-style-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.e-me.edu.gr\/a624402\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.e-me.edu.gr\/a624402\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.e-me.edu.gr\/a624402\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.e-me.edu.gr\/a624402\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/906956"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.e-me.edu.gr\/a624402\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.e-me.edu.gr\/a624402\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.e-me.edu.gr\/a624402\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.e-me.edu.gr\/a624402\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.e-me.edu.gr\/a624402\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.e-me.edu.gr\/a624402\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Types of Devices That Use CPUs <\/span><\/h2>\n
What a CPU Looks Like and Where It's Located <\/span><\/h2>\n
CPU Clock Speed <\/span><\/h2>\n
CPU Cores <\/span><\/h2>\n