What is Central Processing Unit (CPU)?

The central processing unit (CPU), or the processor, is one of the key parts of the computer. It is responsible for carrying out the computational, logic, and control operations of all programs. Computer processors have been developed and used since the mid-20th century.

CPUs are constructed as microchips with a massive amount of microscopic transistors which can turn on and off, thus reading as the digits in the binary system. CPUs can be found not just in computers but also in smartphones, tablets, and other digital devices. They can handle billions of computations per second.

The processor is directly connected to other parts of the computer and is able to delegate tasks to the random-access memory (RAM), the graphical processing unit (GPU), and other components.

The computational power of a CPU is determined using clock speed which is measured using gigahertz (GHz) as the default unit. Clock speed shows how many calculations a CPU is able to complete per second.

CPUs played an important role in the early stages of cryptocurrency mining due to their ability to handle massive loads of information in a single second. The process of mining requires millions of hash functions to be calculated until a specific cryptographic puzzle is solved.

With time, the cryptocurrency mining process has started to demand a higher level of computational data due to the ever-growing number of miners. CPUs have become inferior compared to the capabilities of GPUs and application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC), machines built with the sole purpose of crypto mining.