CompTIA A+ Complete Deluxe Study Guide Recommended Courseware: Exams 220-801 and 220-802, 2nd Edition

Identifying Purposes and Characteristics of Processors

Now that you’ve learned the basics of the motherboard, you need to learn about the most important component on the motherboard: the CPU. The role of the CPU, or central processing unit, is to control and direct all the activities of the computer using both external and internal buses. It is a processor chip consisting of an array of millions of transistors. Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) are the two largest PC-compatible CPU manufacturers. Their chips were featured in Table 1-1 during the discussion of the sockets in which they fit.

The term chip has grown to describe the entire ...