Do you know what component is the heart of the computer?
Well, you'll find out in this video.
My name is Tim Buchalka from the learn programming academy.
And in this video, you'll learn about the computer's central
processing unit, or CPU, along with memory and storage.
Some of us geeks think of the CPU as the heart of the computer
like the human heart brings everything to life, so to speak.
Memory, often called RAM, for random access memory is usually used for
the temporary holding of software programs and apps and their associated
data until the power is turned off.
Storage is the term that describes the long-term holding of software
programs and apps and their associated data even if power is
turned off on the computer or device.
I'd like to think of memory and storage in an analogous
way to my human brain.
The difference is that memory represents all the things my brain has
forgotten whereas storage represents everything I can remember and even
things such as how to walk and talk.
First up though is the CPU.
Here we go.
The circuitry in a computer that controls the manipulation of data is
called the central processing unit or CPU or often just a processor or even
microprocessor due to its small size.
The CPUs typically found in today's desktops, laptops and tablets
are small flat squares that plug into the computer's main circuit
board called the motherboard.
These CPUs are typically 1 or 2 inches or 25 to 50 millimeters in size.
The CPUs found in smartphones and other small wearables
about one half that size.
Some common companies that produce these CPUs are Intel and AMD.
The CPU consists of three parts: the arithmetic logic unit, which
contains the circuitry that performs operations like addition and
subtraction on data; the control unit,
which controls the circuitry for coordinating all of the computer's activities;
and the register unit, which contains temporary memory for data
being manipulated by the arithmetic logic unit.
The CPU is an amazing and fascinating device.
It's difficult to talk about the CPU without including a discussion
about memory and possibly even storage, so I'm combining memory
and storage into this one video.
A typical CPU cycle includes interaction with memory, sometimes
referred to as main memory.
So what is memory or main memory?
Well, think about the 8 gigabytes of memory, for example, often
found in some desktops, laptops or tablets as I talk about this.
This type of memory is said to be volatile, meaning that when
the power is turned off, the memory loses all the data and
software programs and apps that was temporarily stored in it.
So this is different than the gigabytes of memory found in
your smartphone or wearable, which is used for storage.
The storage type of memory is non-volatile, meaning that when
the power is turned off, the data and software programs and apps
remain held in that type of memory.
A few examples of this non-volatile memory used for retaining data,
software programs and apps over time, hard disk drives,
memory sticks and solid state drives, also known as SSDS.
These devices are designed to hold large amounts or gigabytes
or even terabytes of data, software programs and apps.
How the CPU works is simple to discuss but in reality quite sophisticated.
I'll simplify how it works in my discussion here.
Follow along with this figure on screen if you think this will help.
So let's say we have an app that needs to get us input, two
numbers, adding those numbers together and outputting the result.
Seems pretty simple.
Add 3 + 2 resulting in 5.
The instructions from the app must already be inside the CPU, and
we will not discuss the movement of programming instructions from
the actual software programmer app into and out of the CPU.
The user of the app inputs the two numbers 3 and 2 which are stored
in the main memory of the computer.
So looking at this table on screen, the sequence for performing this
addition operation starts with the CPU's control unit, transferring a
copy of the data from memory via a bus, which is a collection of wires
that join the CPU to the main memory and temporarily stores them into two
registers, memory inside the CPU.
The control unit then activates the circuitry for the arithmetic
logic unit to do the addition, which it does placing the result,
a 5, into another register.
Then the control unit places a copy of the result back
into memory via the bus.
The CPU's control unit is perhaps the most sophisticated part of the
CPU as it must do all these steps in perfect sequence and timing.
You may have heard of CPU clock speeds, I suspect.
While the clock speed is what determines the timing in which the
control unit does each of its actions.
The CPU is simply an amazing piece of technology.
It continues to evolve to become even better and faster to keep up with
all us consumers demanding that the computer do so much more for us than
it used to do just a few years ago.
All right, so that's the end of this section.
The next video in this series does a deep dive into the world of
software without you being required to swim or be a computer programmer.
I think you'll find it very interesting.
Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in that next video.
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Thanks for watching.
See you in the next video.