Microprocessor

Microprocessors are silicon chips that contain a computer's central processing unit (CPU)—the device that executes commands entered into the computer. Along with clocks and main memory, CPUs are among a computer's main components. The terms CPU and microprocessor often are used interchangeably. Essentially, microprocessors are responsible for manipulating data and performing numeric calculations and logical comparisons. At the heart of microprocessors are tiny electronic switches called transistors, which allow digital computers to process information in the form of electrical signals. These signals are in one of two states (on or off), and are represented by ones and zeroes, respectively. High-level programming languages like Java or C++, used to write popular software programs, eventually are translated to the machine language of ones and zeroes that computers understand.

Intel was the first company to produce a microprocessor for commercial use. Called the 4004, it was released in the early 1970s and contained slightly more than 2,000 transistors. By the early 2000s, microprocessors contained more than 5 million transistors on a single silicon chip. The more transistors a chip has, the more quickly it can process information. A microprocessor's clock speed defines the number of instructions it can carry out per second. This figure is expressed in Megahertz (MHz) or Gigahertz (GHz). In 2001 the processing speeds of some microprocessors exceeded 1.7 GHz.

In 1965, Intel Co-Founder Gordon E. Moore predicted the number of transistors manufacturers could fit onto a silicon chip would double every 18 months. Because his prediction proved to be accurate over time, it came to be known as Moore's Law. The law eventually will expire when it becomes physically impossible for manufacturers to fit any more transistors onto a single chip. This is expected to happen somewhere around 2017 or 2020 when transistors are atom-sized. At that time, a new computing architecture will be necessary. One possibility is quantum computing, which relies on atomic properties instead of transistors to determine the ones and zeros a computer understands. According to InfoWorld, "quantum computers rely on a particle's traits, such as the direction of its spin, for creating a state. For example, when the spin is up, a particle could be read as 'one,' and when its spin is down, the partide would be read as 'zero."'

In mid-2001 Intel announced experimental technology that it called "Wireless-Internet-On-A-Chip." Essentially, the technology consisted of a silicon chip that held a microprocessor, as well as analog communication circuits and flash memory. According to Intel, the technology potentially would lead to the development of more powerful wireless Internet devices. Around the same time, Intel and Hewlett-Packard announced the launch of the Itanium Processor, a new generation of microprocessor the companies co-developed for use in servers and workstation computers.