The term CPU is used when talking about computers stands for "Central Processing Unit".
Central Processing Unit is the hardware within a computer system or smartphone which carries out the instructions of a computer program. The operations consist of, basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system.
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| The CPU would be located underneath a fan Similar to this on any computer. |
The CPU is located on the motherboard inside the computer tower. The CPU is located under the heat sink that nearly always has a fan on top of it.
The CPU sits in the motherboard as the central unit. All of the other hardware components and programs installed on the system must go through the CPU before their function can be carried out. The CPU's job function is important and enormous in scale.
When a function, program or piece of data is called, the CPU pulls it from Random Access Memory (RAM) and any other hardware in order to process it. The CPU then reads the instructions associated to the task before sending it back to RAM. The instructions that the CPU receives pertains to calculations and data transportation. The system bus is the trail that the data must travel before it is executed. It is the CPU's job to make sure that the data is guided through the system bus to be processed by the CPU and then on to the next step. With every stop on the system bus, the CPU makes sure that the data gets there in the correct order.
Often known as CPU power, CPU cycles, and various other names, processing power is the ability of a computer to manipulate data. Processing power varies with the architecture (and clock speed) of the CPU. Usually CPUs with higher clock speeds and those supporting larger word sizes have more processing power than slower CPUs supporting smaller word sizes.
A fact about CPU's is that their processing power is fixed, this means that the CPU you can only run so fast before it begins to overheat. and another being that their processing power cannot be stored for later use. In other words, if a CPU can process 100 million instructions in one second, one second of idle time equals 100 million instructions worth of processing that have been wasted.
The reason that the power of a CPU is crucial in a gaming platform is so that the developers know how fast a game can run and how much a console can withstand. the developers wouldn't want their games to be jerky/laggy, they would want a clean, crisp frame rate.
Examples of processors used in the PSONE and the PS3:
PSONE:
R3000A 32bit RISC chip @ 33.8mhz
PS3:
3.2 GHz Power Architecture-based PPE with eight 3.2 GHz SPE
**Describe the PROCESSING CAPABILITIES**
More modern CPU's are known to have what is called "multiple cores". For example an 8-core processor, this means that the CPU has 8 cores, which also gives the CPU the capability to be 8 times better than it would be if it was a single core. The CPU will be given a speed that it can be run at, for example, 3.8 GHz, it won't be able to run any faster than 3.8 GHz but it can split the work load of doing multiple tasks on a computer to optimize the run speed.
