Explain to me in simple terms what a microprocessor is.?

Question

This is the part I don't understand.

A microprocessor (sometimes abbreviated µP) is a digital electronic component with transistors on a single semiconductor integrated circuit (IC).

Answer 1

If you remember the old TVs & radios with tubes in the back, and the board the tubes were mounted on, with all those wires going everywhere.
The tubes were replaced by tiny individual transistors.
The transistor does the same thing, but takes up much less electricity.
The big boards with all the wiring was replaced by a printed circuit.
Then the transistors were shrunk & shrunk and millions of them, and the printed circuit were combined on a single piece of silicon.
Microchip/microprocessor.
Depending on what transistors were built in, and how the connections between them were made determines the function of the chip.

Answer 2

A microprocessor (sometimes abbreviated µP) is a digital electronic component with transistors on a single semiconductor integrated circuit (IC). One or more microprocessors typically serve as a central processing unit (CPU) in a computer system or handheld device.

Microprocessors made possible the advent of the microcomputer. Before this, electronic CPUs were typically made from bulky discrete switching devices (and later small-scale integrated circuits) containing the equivalent of only a few transistors. By integrating the processor onto one or a very few large-scale integrated circuit packages (containing the equivalent of thousands or millions of discrete transistors), the cost of processor power was greatly reduced. Since the advent of the IC in the mid-1970s, the microprocessor has become the most prevalent implementation of the CPU, nearly completely replacing all other forms. See History of computing hardware for pre-electronic and early electronic computers.

The evolution of microprocessors has been known to follow Moore's Law when it comes to steadily increasing performance over the years. This law suggests that the complexity of an integrated circuit, with respect to minimum component cost, doubles every 24 months. This dictum has generally proven true since the early 1970s. From their humble beginnings as the drivers for calculators, the continued increase in power has led to the dominance of microprocessors over every other form of computer; every system from the largest mainframes to the smallest handheld computers now uses a microprocessor at its core.


^^ That is the simplistic definition of a microprocessor. Please realize when you talk about computers you must know quite a bit about computers before grasping a firm understanding.

Answer 3

A microprocessor is an electronic component that performs logical and mathematical operations on bits of data. It can do certain operation such as move, rotate, add, subtract and such.
Here is an example of how it might add two numbers.
1. Get the first number from memory location #1.
2. Get the second number from memory location #2.
3. Add the two numbers.
4. Store the new number in memory location #3.

The microprocessor has to work in steps. Everything it does is really simple, but by doing these simple things very fast, it is able to perform complex tasks such as games and such.

Answer 4

A microprocessor is the part of a computer that processes infromation. It's job is inhearently simple, as it is just a really fast calculator that processes the 0's and 1's that the computer feeds it.

Answer 5

CPU Central- Processing - Unit

is the component in a digital computer that interprets instructions and processes data contained in computer programs.

Answer 6

It is a chip that acts as the brain of your computer. It follows directions and crunches numbers very quckly but doesnt have much memory. (memory is an addon).

:)

Answer 7

a tiny chip