Central Processing Unit (CPU)

​Interprets and executes the instructions in each program

Supervises arithmetic and logical data manipulations

Communicates with all the other parts of the computer system indirectly through memory

An extraordinarily complex collection of electronic circuits

Housed along with other chips and electronic components on the motherboard

​A multi-core processor is a single chip with two or more separate processor (dual-core and quad-core) (e.g. AMD Phenom II X2, Intel Core Duo)

Each processor core runs at a slower clock speed than a single-core, but typically increase overall performance + energy efficient because it runs simultaneously on related instruction

Processor consists of two parts: Control Unit (CU) and Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU)

CU: is to interpret each instruction issued by a program and then initiates appropriate action

ALU: performs arithmetic, logic and comparison