Processor (computing)

Circuits of a microprocessor at 200x magnification

In computing, a processor or processing unit is an electronic circuit which performs operations on some external data source, usually memory or some other data stream. The term is frequently used to refer to the central processor (central processing unit) in a system, but typical computer systems (especially SoCs) combine a number of specialised "processors".

Examples

CPU – central processing unit
- If designed conforming to the von Neumann architecture, it contains at least a control unit (CU), arithmetic logic unit (ALU) and processor registers.
- In some contexts, the ALU and registers are called the processing unit.
GPU – graphics processing unit
VPU – vision processing unit
TPU – tensor processing unit
NPU – neural processing unit
PPU – physics processing unit
DSP – digital signal processor
ISP – image signal processor
SPU or SPE – synergistic processing element in the Cell microprocessor
FPGA – field-programmable gate array
sound chip

See also

All pages with titles containing processing unit
Microprocessor
Multi-core processor
Superscalar processor
Hardware acceleration

Processor technologies

Instruction set
architectures

Types	CISC RISC Application-specific EDGE TRIPS VLIW EPIC MISC OISC NISC ZISC comparison addressing modes

Instruction pipelining	Pipeline stall Operand forwarding Classic RISC pipeline
Hazards	Data dependency Structural Control False sharing
Out-of-order	Tomasulo algorithm Reservation station Re-order buffer Register renaming
Speculative	Branch prediction Memory dependence prediction

Level	Bit Bit-serial Word Instruction Pipelining Scalar Superscalar Task Thread Process Data Vector Memory Distributed
Multithreading	Temporal Simultaneous Hyperthreading Speculative Preemptive Cooperative
Flynn's taxonomy	SISD SIMD SWAR SIMT MISD MIMD SPMD

Processor
performance

Transistor count
Instructions per cycle (IPC)
- Cycles per instruction (CPI)
Instructions per second (IPS)
Floating-point operations per second (FLOPS)
Transactions per second (TPS)
Synaptic updates per second (SUPS)
Performance per watt (PPW)
Cache performance metrics
Computer performance by orders of magnitude

By application	Microprocessor Microcontroller Mobile Notebook Ultra-low-voltage ASIP
Systems on chip	System on a chip (SoC) Multiprocessor (MPSoC) Programmable (PSoC) Network on a chip (NoC)
Hardware accelerators	AI accelerator Vision processing unit (VPU) Physics processing unit (PPU) Digital signal processor (DSP) Tensor processing unit (TPU) Secure cryptoprocessor Network processor Baseband processor

Core count

Components

Functional units	Arithmetic logic unit (ALU) Address generation unit (AGU) Floating-point unit (FPU) Memory management unit Load–store unit Translation lookaside buffer (TLB)
Logic	Combinational Sequential Glue Logic gate Quantum Array
Registers	Processor register Register file Memory buffer Program counter Stack
Control unit	Instruction unit Data buffer Write buffer Microcode ROM Counter
Datapath	Multiplexer Demultiplexer Adder Multiplier CPU Binary decoder Address decoder Sum addressed decoder Barrel shifter
Circuitry	Integrated circuit 3D Mixed-signal Power management Boolean Digital Analog Quantum Switch

Power
management

Related