A LEVEL COMPUTING
Interrupt Handling
Theory
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2. What is the CPU?
The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is the 'brain' of the computer. It is where all the searching, sorting, calculating and decision making takes place.
The CPU contains a tiny quartz clock. Each time this clock 'ticks', one instruction can be dealt with by the CPU. So the more times this clock ticks per second, the more instructions the CPU can carry out and the faster things get done.
The speed of the CPU is measured in either Megaherts (MHz) or more commonly now in Gigahertz (GHz). A 1 MHz CPU can carry out one million instructions per second. A 1 GHz CPU can carry out 1 billion instructions per second!
A typical CPU installed in a computer today would run at around 3 GHz.
Challenge see if you can find out one extra fact on this topic that we haven't already told you
Click on this link: CPU
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