Processor - The Brain of Computer

Processor is the computer's brain. It's typically a square ceramic package plugged into the motherboard, with a large heat sink on top and often a fan on top of that. It allows the processing of numeric data, meaning information entered in binary form, and the execution of instructions stored in memory.

The first microprocessor  was invented in 1971. It was Intel 4004 and 4-bit calculation device with a speed of 108 kHz. Now microprocessor power has grown exponentially.

Processors are grouped into the following families, according to their unique instruction sets:

80x86 ("x" represents the family. 386, 486, 586, 686, etc.)

ARM

IA-64

MIPS

Motorola 6800

PowerPC

SPARC

All instructions in computer are processed by the CPU. There are many "CPU architectures", each of which has its own characteristics. The dominant CPU architectures used in personal computing are x86 and PowerPC. x86 is easily the most popular processor for this class of machine (the dominant manufacturers of x86 CPUs are Intel and AMD).