The processor is the main microcircuit on the motherboard that executes the program code. The speed and performance of the computer depends on the characteristics of the processor.
One of the main indicators of a processor's performance is its clock frequency, i.e. the number of commands it executes per second. This value is measured in Mega and Gigahertz. The higher the clock speed of the processor, the faster the computer runs. The clock speed of modern processors reaches 4 GHz. Another important characteristic is the number of computing cores in one package or on one crystal of an integrated circuit. The first dual-core Opteron processors for servers were released by AMD in 2005. A couple of months later, rival Intel released a 2-core Pentium-D processor for the personal computer. Since then, increasing the number of cores has been considered one of the most promising ways to improve processor performance. Now you can already see personal computers running on 8-core processors, and servers on 16-core ones. In addition, the speed of the processor depends on the size of the cache memory, that is, the memory built into the crystal, which stores intermediate calculation results and the most frequently used data. The presence of this buffer increases performance, since the processor does not have to address urgent information to the random access memory (RAM). The larger the built-in memory, the higher the performance. The cache memory is divided into levels: L1, L2 and in modern L3 processors. The lower the level, the lower the volume and the higher the access speed. In multi-core processors, depending on their design, L2 and L3 can be common for all cores or individual for each core. Modern processors consume up to 130 watts of electricity. Accordingly, they heat up during operation. Overheating can damage the microcircuit. For heat dissipation, the processors are equipped with heatsinks (a set of metal plates) and coolers (fans). The main manufacturers of processors for personal computers are now Intel and AMD. Intel products are traditionally considered more reliable, but also more expensive. The change in the architecture of the processors based on the Conroe core allowed to reduce power consumption, and, accordingly, the heating of its multi-core microcircuits. To find out which processor is installed on your computer, right-click on the "My Computer" icon, and then left-click on "Properties". The system will display data on the type of processor and its manufacturer. More details about the main chip can be obtained using the free CPU-Z program. Download it from the developer's site, run it and in the CPU tab find additional data about the processor, including the size of the cache memory, the frequency of the working bus, etc.
