Processors

Processors, processors, processors… we have all heard of it! From the word processor what could be coming to your mind? Intel or AMD maybe, but for some, like me, I think of them to be the food processor that my mom uses! 😅

Introduction

But, I know we are talking about those tiny things that AMD and Intel market as the most futuristic products ever seen on a computer in the universe… So, as the name suggests, processors are more or less actually like food processors… They take the input, PROCESS it and give you your desired output. It is that simple! It’s like your digestive system, just that the actual output remains inside your body and the real output is too grotesque to be talked about! 😆😆

Our friends at Wikipedia say: The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and input/output (I/O) operations specified by the instructions in the program.

Now the CPU can be related to being the complete digestive system and the various components of the CPU that help you get the desired result/information can be related to the organs of the digestive system. These organs are several in number. 👻

What are they made of?

Today with rapid advancement in the tech industry, the common processors have gotten smaller and smaller and could go even to such a size that we cannot even see them properly with our naked eyes! Just waiting for the day when these processors would be inserted into our bodies and we would be the computers… 😋

The basic element used in a CPU is Silicon. It is a semi-metal. Wait! What exactly are semi-metals? Think of them to be the politicians 👮, they promise to do all the good stuff but leave you only doing some of the things that are good and some that are bad. Now replace the good with metals and bad with non-metals without any offence to non-metals! Then that would mean semi-metals have some properties of metals and some of the non-metals? Yeah, you got it right.

Does the question arise that why silicon is made the all-time king of processors without having any heir? Yup, lucky Silicon! This primarily because silicon can be used as an insulator (cannot conduct electricity) and as a semi-conductor (sometimes can/sometimes cannot conduct electricity) which is a useful feature for processor! Also, silicon is very very very cheap as it is abundant in the earth’s crust and who doesn’t like getting a bit of profit, huh!!?? 😉

A processor is made up of many transistors, I mean millions of them! Now, what on earth is a transistor? Think of it like a dam, where there is a lot of water that gets channelised into various gateways to increase efficiency in power generation. Similarly, a transistor helps channelise the electrical impulses that you generate by doing something on the computer to get the result that you want. The more the number of transistors that you can place inside a processor which to has to be small as well. It is like fitting a week’s worth of clothing for a two day trip in a school bag!

Nm size and efficiency

If you go a bit deeper into the world of microprocessors, it would be natural for you to hear the term nanometers, also called nm. To put this to the perspective of processors, it is the distance between any two transistors in a processor! The smaller the distance, the greater the efficiency as the impulse can travel quicker. Just look at why sound travels the quickest in solids and its efficiency in its travel speeds reduces as it moves towards gases! Just because of the arrangement of particles in various states of matter.

Mobile v/s Laptop v/s PC

Based on how much output a processor can generate, you can categorise these processors as mobile or desktop processors. For me, I would rank the desktop processor as the the ‘Thanos’ of processors, meaning it is the quickest, then comes ‘Thor’ which could be the processors used in laptops and last but not the least ‘Groot’ the weakest but still strong enough, mobile processors. You can add your characters to the rankings!

The Fact of the Post

Did you know that the full form of the processor making giant AMD is Advanced Micro Devices Incorporation and the full form of Intel is I Never Tell Everything as Lies? Now guess which one of these true. Easy, right?