2. Primary Parts of the CPU
Control Unit (CU) At the risk of being obvious,
the control unit controls the functions of the
CPU.
3. Protection Test Unit (PTU) This part of the
CPU works with the control unit to monitor
whether or not functions are carried out
correctly.
4. Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU) The ALU
performs all of the calculations and comparative
logic functions for the CPU
5. Floating Point Unit (FPU) The FPU goes
by several other names, including the math
coprocessor, the numerical processing unit
(NPU), and the numerical data processor
(NDP).
6. Memory Management Unit (MMU) The
MMU handles the addressing and cataloging of
where data is stored in system memory.
7. Bus Interface Unit (BIU) The BIU
supervises the transfer of data over the bus
system between the other components of the
computer and the CPU.
8. The Prefetch Unit This unit preloads the
instruction registers of the CPU with instructions
from memory whenever the BIU is idle. This
allows the CPU to look ahead at future
instructions.
9. Decode Unit Many instructions are actually
combinations of simpler instructions. The
decode unit does just about what its name
suggests.
10. Registers Built into the CPU are a number of
holding areas and buffers that are used to
temporarily hold the data, addresses, and
instructions being passed around between the
CPU’s components.
