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A computer uses a microprocessor to do its work.The microprocessor is the heart of any computer whether it is a desktop machine,a server or a laptop.A microprocessor also known as the central processing unit(CPU) is a complete computation engine that is fabricated on a single chip.The first microprocessor was the Intel 4004, introduced in 1971.The 4004 was not very powerful, all it could do was add and subtract and it could only do that 4 bits at a time.The first microprocessor to make a real flash was the Intel 8088 introduced in 1979.

HISTORY OF MICROPROCESSOR

NAME	YEAR	TRANSISTORS	CLOCK SPEED	DATA WIDTH	MIPS
8088	1979	29000	5 MHz	16 bits,8 bits bus	0.33
80286	1982	134000	6 MHz	16 bits	1
80386	1985	275000	16 MHz	32 bits	5
80486	1989	1200000	25-66 MHz	32 bits	20
Pentium	1993	3100000	133 MHz	32 bits,64 bit bus	100
Pentium II	1997	7500000	233 MHz	32 bits,64 bit bus	600
Pentium III	1999	9500000	450 MHz	32 bits,64 bit bus	1000

Now Intel is talking about 26 million transistors in the Pentium IV processor to be released soon.

Transistors - The number of transistors on a single chip has risen steadily over the years. The clock speed is the maximum rate that the chip can be clocked.

Data width is the width of the Arithmetic and Logic Unit inside the CPU.An 8-bit ALU can add, subtract,multiply,divide etc.Two 8-bit numbers,while a 32-bit ALU can manipulate 32-bit numbers. An 8-bit ALU would have to execute four instructions to add two 32-bit numbers,while a 32-bit ALU can do it with one instruction.In many cases the external database is the same width as the ALU, but not always.8088 had a 16-bit ALU and a n8-bit bus while the modern Pentiums fetch 64 bits data at a time for their 32-bit ALUs.MIPS stands for Millions of instructions per second and is a rough measure of the performance of a CPU.

A Microprocessor using its ALU can perform mathematical operations.Modern chips contain complete floating point processors that can perform extremely sophisticated operations on large floating point numbers.A Microprocessor can move data from one memory location to another.It can make decisions and jump to a new set of instructions based on those decisions.The microprocessor has an address bus(8,16,32 bits wide) that sends an address to memory.A data bus is one that can send data to memory or receive data from memory. The RD(Read) and WR(Write) line will tell the memory whether it wants to set or get the address location.A clock line that lets a clock pulse sequences the processor.A reset line that resets the program counter to zero and restarts execution.

The RD and WR buses and lines connect either to Random Access Memory (RAM) or Read Only Memory (ROM) - generally both.In a sample microprocessor if there is an address bus 8 bits wide and a data bus 8 bits wide, then this means that the microprocessor can address 2⁸ equal to 256 bytes of memory and it can read or write 8 bits of the memory at a time.A ROM chip is programmed with a permanent collection of preset bytes like the Basic Input and Output System (BIOS).When the microprocessor starts it begins executing instructions it finds in the BIOS.The BIOS instructions do things like testing the hardware in the machine,and then it goes to the hard disk to fetch the Boot sector.The Boot sector is another small program the BIOS store sit RAM after reading it off the disk.The microprocessor the begins executing the boot sector�s instructions from RAM.The boot sector program will tell the microprocessor to fetch something else from the hard disk into RAM, which it then executes,and so on.This is how the microprocessor loads and executes the entire operating system.(DOS,Windows,Windows NT,Novell NetWare,Unix,Linux,etc.).At present computers coming with 32 - 128 MB of Synchronous Dynamic RAM.There is something called Cache memory in the chip for temporary storage of instructions for faster execution.

This explains the basic technology involved in the operation of a microprocessor,in layman terms.

PERFORMANCE OF LATEST PROCESSORS

PROCESSOR	CPU MARK	3D WINBENCH TEST	BUSINESS WINSTONE	FPU WINMARK	3D MARK 99
P||| 1Ghz	86.1	1.93	31.6	5290	14572
P||| 700Mhz	64	-	29.6	3710	10707
Thunderbird 1Ghz	98.6	2.25	34.9	6020	17172

It can be deduced that at present, Advanced Micro System's 1GHz Thunderbird Processor reins supreme in processing power,graphics handling,advanced CAD operation,Quake 111 Arena and Intel has to catch up.But AMD processors work with Slot A Motherboard with Front Side Bus speed of 200MHz whereas Pentiums work with Socket 370 board at FSB speed of 133MHz maximum..