🖥️ Inside a computer 3D
🧠 CPU (processor)
Fetches each instruction from memory, decodes it and executes it — adding, comparing, jumping — billions of times a second.
Like: The chef who does the actual cooking.
- Speed
- ≈ 3–6 GHz (billion clock ticks per second)
- Cores
- 4 to 24+ in a desktop; each is a complete processor
- Transistors
- Tens of billions
- Size of features
- ≈ 3–5 nm process (2024–26)
🔌 Logic inside: ALU = adders + logic gates · instruction decoder = decoders · registers = flip-flops · MUXes pick which register feeds the ALU.
- Fetch: the CPU reads the next instruction from memory (address in the program counter).
- Decode: a decoder works out what the instruction means — add, load, store, jump…
- Execute: the ALU (adders and gates) does the work; multiplexers route the data.
- Store: the result is written into a register (flip-flops) or memory.
- Repeat — billions of times a second, every clock tick. This is the von Neumann design (1945).