IT Support ｜ The Modern Computer

In our computer, we have something called the External Data Bus or EDB.It’s a row of wires that interconnect the parts of our computer, kind of the veins in our body. When you send a voltage to one of the wires, we say the state of the wire is on, or represented by a 1. If there’s no voltage, then we say that the state is off, represented by a 0. This is how we send around our ones and zeroes.

Inside the CPU there are components known as Registers.They let us store the data that our CPU works with. If for example, our CPU wanted to add two numbers, one number would be stored in a register a.Another number would be stored in register b. The result of those two numbers would be stored in register c. Imagine the register is one of our chef’s work tables. Since she has a place to work, she can start to cook. To do so she uses a translation book to translate her binary into tasks that she can perform.

Since we can only send one line of data through the EDB at the time, we need the help of another component, the Memory Controller Chip or MCC. The MCC is a bridge between the CPU and the RAM. You can think of it, a nerve in your brain connecting to your memories. The CPU talks to the MCC, and says, hey, I need the instructions for step number three of this recipe. The MCC finds the instructions for step number three in RAM, grabs the data, and sends it through the EDB. There’s another bus. There’s nothing like a bus involved in the process called the Address bus. It connects the CPU to the MCC, and sends over the location of the data, but not the data itself. Then the MCC takes the address and looks for the data. And then data is then sent over the EDB.


RAM isn’t the fastest way we can get more data to our CPU for processing.The CPU also uses something known as Cache.
Cache is smaller than RAM, but it let’s us store data that we use often, and let’s us quickly reference it. Think of RAM like a refrigerator full of food. It’s easy to get into, but it takes time to get something out. On the flip side of that, Cache is like the stuff we have in our pockets. It’s used to store recently or frequently accessed data. There are three different cache levels in a CPU, L1, L2, and L3. L1 is the smallest and fastest cache.

CPU has an internal clock that keeps its operational in sync. It connects to a special wire called Clock wire. When you send or receive data, it sends a voltage to that clock wire to let the CPU know it can start doing calculations. Think of our clock wires as the ticking of a clock. For every tick, the CPU does one cycle of operations. When you send a voltage to the clock wire, it’s referred to as a clock cycle. If you have lots of data you need to process in a command. You need to run lots of clock cycles.
Have you ever seen a CPU in the store and has something labeled 3.4ghz, this number refers to the Clock speed of the CPU. Which is a maximum number of clock cycles that it can handle in a set in a certain time period. 3.40 gigahertz is 3.4 billion cycles per second. That’s super fast. But just because it can run at this speed, doesn’t mean it does. It just means that it can’t exceed this number. Still, that number doesn’t stop some people from trying. There’s a way you can exceed the number of clock cycles on your CPU on almost any device. It’s referred to as Overclocking and it increases the rate of your CPU clock cycles in order to perform more tasks. This is commonly used to increase the performance in low-end CPUs. Let’s say you’re a gamer and you want to have better graphics and less lag while playing. You might want to overclock your CPU when you play the game, but there are cons to doing this, like potentially overheating your CPU.