Gadgetory

we live in a day and age where our electronic devices are an integral part of our daily routine what's inside them that gives them the power to do so many amazing things I'm Joe Levi and on today's episode of a pocket now power user we're going to talk about the brain that powers your device the CPU the central processing unit or CPU for short has been around for quite some time but has changed significantly over the years traditionally the CPU has been the traffic cop the component that handles and routes all the commands flowing through a system to the place where they need to go it's backed up by other components like the ALU for processing mathematical computation storage for long-term retention of data RAM in which applications run GPU for outputting what you see on your screen and numerous other subsystems today many of these subsystems are built into just a few chips often called a system-on-a-chip or SOC regardless of how many subsystems are integrated into an SOC the CPU still lives at the heart and does most of the leg work the faster CPU is the quicker we can get things done but fast is a relative term to figure out what that means we've gotta dig a little deeper not all CPUs use the same lingo some cpus are built around risk where others use sisk your desktop computer probably uses a cisco processor complex instruction set computing your smartphone and tablet probably use a RISC processor reduced instruction set computing the definitions of these two terms continue to evolve but from a basic perspective RISC processors and the programs that ran on them were much more basic than the complex programs that could run on a cisco processor risk was used for embedded and specialized hardware or such was the theory whereas sis was used for larger and more powerful systems today we see those lines blurred and the instruction sets of many risk based processors are just as large as their sisk counterparts the clock rate or frequency is the speed at which a CPU can execute instructions the faster the clock rate a faster can get things done just like your heart the CPU can only operate within a predefined set of frequencies run it too fast and things get unstable and usually pretty hot run it too slowly and your system slows to a crawl to pump more data through just like your heart pumping more blood you either need to go bigger or add more pumps to increase CPU speeds Engineers simply added more transistors this essentially makes the CPU bigger and be able to handle more data in the same amount of time Gordon ymore co-founder of Intel Corp described a trend in a paper he wrote back in nineteen sixty-five he predicted that the capabilities of electronic devices would improve it roughly exponential rates the concept that transistor counts and densities would double at a fairly predictable rate has guided the semiconductor industry for decades originally this period was approximately 18 months you could count on your computer doubling in speed about every year and a half today that rate has slowed to about every two to three years we often equate speed to the frequency at which the cpu operates while frequency measured in mega Hertz or gigahertz is certainly an important factor there are many other considerations when talking about speed this has led chip manufacturers like Intel and AMD to shy away from marketing their chips based primarily on their speeds now manufactures emphasize model numbers over clock speeds what about quarks well a core is simply another processor if you want to go faster add another one some computers such as high-end servers have multiple sockets to accept multiple individual processors as you can imagine this takes up quite a bit of space on a motherboard to provide a similar benefit without doubling the required space or tripling or quadrupling manufacturers began building additional processors onto a single chip today we have dual core quad core and so on while this approach certainly increases observed performance there becomes a point where the CPU is no longer the bottleneck and some other component or subsystem holds the entire system back what about sighs and by size I mean nanometers CPUs consume quite a bit of power risk chips generally consume less power than their sister parts as chips get faster they run hotter and they use more electricity to power them to mitigate these factors chips are made smaller and more efficient smaller is measured in the nano meters of their construction this size has progressed from 90 nanometers to 45 and now we're down into the 20s chips built using smaller construction require fewer raw materials to construct them they consume less power and they put off less heat all of which are very beneficial in portable electronics so what does all this mean there was a time when you could easily calculate the cost benefit of upgrading to a faster processor back then it was almost entirely focused around megahertz today there are many many more variables to consider when evaluating the CPU inside a device you're looking at speed is now only one component of the equation power consumption is now almost equally as important maybe more so because there are so many variables deciding on which is the best is no longer black and white it will vary by application and more importantly by what's important to the individual what's important to you you'll need to weigh each feature individually to come up with what best satisfies your needs now that you know a little bit more about what goes into a CPU and what things to look for you'll be a little bit better prepared when looking at all those specs find out where the best place is to put your money thanks for joining us for the second season of the pocket now power user make sure you give the video a thumbs up and tell your friends about it make sure you turn in next week where we're going to talk about another component that powers your mobile lifestyle