CPU

Read How Stuff Works: CPU.

Answer the following questions:

1. What was the first chip that was used in a computer? What was the first chip used in the IBM Personal Computer (PC)?
2. Any program written for the 8088 chip will work on a new Pentium chip. Why is this important?
3. What is Assembly Language?
4. Micro Processors do three essential jobs. What are they? How do these jobs allow the computer to process information?
5. What is an ALU? What does the ALU do?
6. List the steps the processor would have to go through to do a simple addition of two numbers. Be as detailed as possible.
7. Using the Assembly Language given on page 5 of the reading change the list you made in question 6 into a assembly language computer program.
8. What does the computer do to the Assembly Language code that you wrote? What would it look like to the computer? Please explain this only. You do not need to translate the Assembly code into machine code.
9. What is meant by 64 bit processors? What are their major advantages?

©2006 C. Whittington