Microprocessor Chips (MPU)

Microprocessor chips (MPU) are silicon devices that serve as the central processing unit (CPU) in computers. They contain thousands of electronic components and use a collection of machine instructions to perform mathematical operations and move data from one memory location to another. Microprocessors contain an address bus that sends addresses to memory, read and write lines, and a data bus that can send data to memory or receive data from memory. They also include a clock line that enables a clock pulse to sequence the processor and a reset line that resets the program counter and restarts execution. Basic microprocessor chip components include one or more arithmetic logic units (ALU) and shift registers. There are two system architectures for microprocessor chips. Devices that use a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) design process a few simple instructions instead of many complex ones in order to speed operations. By contrast, devices that use a complex instruction set computer (CISC) design provide variable length instructions, multiple addressing forms, and contain only a small number of general-purpose registers.