Litecoin multi gpu setup wireless networks
37 commentsHow i use hitbtc for beginners trading bitcoin ethereum pre icos and many altcoins
A microprocessor is a computer processor that incorporates the functions of a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit IC , [1] or at most a few integrated circuits. Microprocessors contain both combinational logic and sequential digital logic.
Microprocessors operate on numbers and symbols represented in the binary numeral system. The integration of a whole CPU onto a single chip or on a few chips greatly reduced the cost of processing power, increasing efficiency. Integrated circuit processors are produced in large numbers by highly automated processes, resulting in a low per-unit cost. Single-chip processors increase reliability because there are many fewer electrical connections to fail.
As microprocessor designs improve, the cost of manufacturing a chip with smaller components built on a semiconductor chip the same size generally stays the same. Before microprocessors, small computers had been built using racks of circuit boards with many medium- and small-scale integrated circuits. Microprocessors combined this into one or a few large-scale ICs. Continued increases in microprocessor capacity have since rendered other forms of computers almost completely obsolete see history of computing hardware , with one or more microprocessors used in everything from the smallest embedded systems and handheld devices to the largest mainframes and supercomputers.
The internal arrangement of a microprocessor varies depending on the age of the design and the intended purposes of the microprocessor. The complexity of an integrated circuit IC is bounded by physical limitations on the number of transistors that can be put onto one chip, the number of package terminations that can connect the processor to other parts of the system, the number of interconnections it is possible to make on the chip, and the heat that the chip can dissipate.
Advancing technology makes more complex and powerful chips feasible to manufacture. A minimal hypothetical microprocessor might include only an arithmetic logic unit ALU and a control logic section.
Each operation of the ALU sets one or more flags in a status register, which indicate the results of the last operation zero value, negative number, overflow, or others.
The control logic retrieves instruction codes from memory and initiates the sequence of operations required for the ALU to carry out the instruction. A single operation code might affect many individual data paths, registers, and other elements of the processor. As integrated circuit technology advanced, it was feasible to manufacture more and more complex processors on a single chip.
The size of data objects became larger; allowing more transistors on a chip allowed word sizes to increase from 4- and 8-bit words up to today's bit words. Additional features were added to the processor architecture; more on-chip registers sped up programs, and complex instructions could be used to make more compact programs.
Floating-point arithmetic, for example, was often not available on 8-bit microprocessors, but had to be carried out in software. Integration of the floating point unit first as a separate integrated circuit and then as part of the same microprocessor chip sped up floating point calculations. Occasionally, physical limitations of integrated circuits made such practices as a bit slice approach necessary. Instead of processing all of a long word on one integrated circuit, multiple circuits in parallel processed subsets of each data word.
The ability to put large numbers of transistors on one chip makes it feasible to integrate memory on the same die as the processor. This CPU cache has the advantage of faster access than off-chip memory and increases the processing speed of the system for many applications. Processor clock frequency has increased more rapidly than external memory speed, except in the recent past, [ when?
A microprocessor is a general-purpose system. Several specialized processing devices have followed from the technology:. Modern microprocessors go into low power states when possible, [6] and an 8-bit chip running bit calculations would be active for more cycles. This creates a delicate balance between software, hardware and use patterns, and costs. When manufactured in a similar process, 8-bit microprocessors use less power when operating and less power when sleeping than bit microprocessors.
However, a bit microprocessor may use less average power than an 8-bit microprocessor when the application requires certain operations such as floating-point math that take many more clock cycles on an 8-bit microprocessor than on a bit microprocessor, so the 8-bit microprocessor spends more time in high-power operating mode.
Thousands of items that were traditionally not computer-related include microprocessors. Such products as cellular telephones, DVD video system and HDTV broadcast systems fundamentally require consumer devices with powerful, low-cost, microprocessors. Increasingly stringent pollution control standards effectively require automobile manufacturers to use microprocessor engine management systems to allow optimal control of emissions over the widely varying operating conditions of an automobile.
Non-programmable controls would require complex, bulky, or costly implementation to achieve the results possible with a microprocessor.
A microprocessor control program embedded software can be easily tailored to different needs of a product line, allowing upgrades in performance with minimal redesign of the product. Different features can be implemented in different models of a product line at negligible production cost.
Microprocessor control of a system can provide control strategies that would be impractical to implement using electromechanical controls or purpose-built electronic controls. For example, an engine control system in an automobile can adjust ignition timing based on engine speed, load on the engine, ambient temperature, and any observed tendency for knocking—allowing an automobile to operate on a range of fuel grades.
The advent of low-cost computers on integrated circuits has transformed modern society. General-purpose microprocessors in personal computers are used for computation, text editing, multimedia display , and communication over the Internet.
Many more microprocessors are part of embedded systems , providing digital control over myriad objects from appliances to automobiles to cellular phones and industrial process control. The first use of the term "microprocessor" is attributed to Viatron Computer Systems [11] describing the custom integrated circuit used in their System 21 small computer system announced in Building on an earlier Busicom design from , Intel introduced the first commercial microprocessor, the 4-bit Intel , in , followed by its 8-bit microprocessor in AL-1, an 8-bit CPU slice that was expandable to bits.
During the s, computer processors were constructed out of small- and medium-scale ICs, each containing from tens of transistors to a few hundred. These were placed and soldered onto printed circuit boards , and often multiple boards were interconnected in a chassis. A large number of discrete logic gates uses more electrical power—-and therefore produces more heat—-than a more integrated design with fewer ICs. The distance that signals have to travel between ICs on the boards limits a computer's operating system speed.
In the NASA Apollo space missions to the moon in the s and s, all onboard computations for primary guidance, navigation, and control were provided by a small custom processor called "The Apollo Guidance Computer ". It used circuit boards whose only logic elements were three-input NOR gates. The first microprocessors emerged in the early s and were used for electronic calculators , using binary-coded decimal BCD arithmetic on 4-bit words.
Other embedded uses of 4-bit and 8-bit microprocessors, such as terminals , printers , various kinds of automation etc. Affordable 8-bit microprocessors with bit addressing also led to the first general-purpose microcomputers from the mids on. Since the early s, the increase in capacity of microprocessors has followed Moore's law ; this originally suggested that the number of components that can be fitted onto a chip doubles every year.
With present technology, it is actually every two years, [13] and as a result Moore later changed the period to two years. Three projects delivered a microprocessor at about the same time: In , Garrett AiResearch who employed designers Ray Holt and Steve Geller was invited to produce a digital computer to compete with electromechanical systems then under development for the main flight control computer in the US Navy 's new F Tomcat fighter.
The design was significantly approximately 20 times smaller and much more reliable than the mechanical systems it competed against, and was used in all of the early Tomcat models.
This system contained "a bit, pipelined , parallel multi-microprocessor ". The Navy refused to allow publication of the design until Ray Holt's autobiographical story of this design and development is presented in the book: From its inception, it was shrouded in secrecy until when at Holt's request, the US Navy allowed the documents into the public domain.
Since then people [ who? Holt has stated that no one has compared this microprocessor with those that came later. The scientific papers and literature published around reveal that the MP digital processor used for the F Tomcat aircraft of the US Navy qualifies as the first microprocessor.
Its design indicates a major advance over Intel, and two year earlier. It actually worked and was flying in the F when the Intel was announced. It indicates that today's industry theme of converging DSP - microcontroller architectures was started in This convergence of DSP and microcontroller architectures is known as a digital signal controller.
The layout for the four layers of the PMOS process was hand drawn at x scale on mylar film, a significant task at the time given the complexity of the chip. Pico was a spinout by five GI design engineers whose vision was to create single chip calculator ICs.
They had significant previous design experience on multiple calculator chipsets with both GI and Marconi-Elliott. Calculators were becoming the largest single market for semiconductors so Pico and GI went on to have significant success in this burgeoning market.
Gilbert Hyatt was awarded a patent claiming an invention pre-dating both TI and Intel, describing a "microcontroller". The result of their work was the TMS , which went on the market in TI filed for a patent on the microprocessor. Gary Boone was awarded U. Patent 3,, for the single-chip microprocessor architecture on September 4, In , and again in , Intel and TI entered into broad patent cross-licensing agreements, with Intel paying royalties to TI for the microprocessor patent.
A history of these events is contained in court documentation from a legal dispute between Cyrix and Intel, with TI as inventor and owner of the microprocessor patent. The computer-on-a-chip patent, called the "microcomputer patent" at the time, U. Patent 4,, , was awarded to Gary Boone and Michael J. Aside from this patent, the standard meaning of microcomputer is a computer using one or more microprocessors as its CPU s , while the concept defined in the patent is more akin to a microcontroller.
The project that produced the originated in , when Busicom , a Japanese calculator manufacturer, asked Intel to build a chipset for high-performance desktop calculators.
Busicom's original design called for a programmable chip set consisting of seven different chips. Three of the chips were to make a special-purpose CPU with its program stored in ROM and its data stored in shift register read-write memory.
Ted Hoff , the Intel engineer assigned to evaluate the project, believed the Busicom design could be simplified by using dynamic RAM storage for data, rather than shift register memory, and a more traditional general-purpose CPU architecture. Hoff came up with a four-chip architectural proposal: Although not a chip designer, he felt the CPU could be integrated into a single chip, but as he lacked the technical know-how the idea remained just a wish for the time being.
While the architecture and specifications of the MCS-4 came from the interaction of Hoff with Stanley Mazor , a software engineer reporting to him, and with Busicom engineer Masatoshi Shima , during , Mazor and Hoff moved on to other projects. In April , Intel hired Italian engineer Federico Faggin as project leader, a move that ultimately made the single-chip CPU final design a reality Shima meanwhile designed the Busicom calculator firmware and assisted Faggin during the first six months of the implementation.
Since SGT was his very own invention, Faggin also used it to create his new methodology for random logic design that made it possible to implement a single-chip CPU with the proper speed, power dissipation and cost.
Production units of the were first delivered to Busicom in March and shipped to other customers in late The Intel was followed in by the Intel , the world's first 8-bit microprocessor. The was not, however, an extension of the design, but instead the culmination of a separate design project at Intel, arising from a contract with Computer Terminals Corporation , of San Antonio TX, for a chip for a terminal they were designing, [37] the Datapoint —fundamental aspects of the design came not from Intel but from CTC.
In , with Intel yet to deliver the part, CTC opted to use their own implementation in the Datapoint , using traditional TTL logic instead thus the first machine to run " code" was not in fact a microprocessor at all and was delivered a year earlier.