Functional Elements of the Computer

The functional elements of a computer are the

central processing unit (CPU), random access storage (memory), and input/output to external devices (I/O).

The sub-units of the CPU are

instruction decode and CPU control, control of addressing for memory and I/O ports, data transfer control, data and address registers and arithmetic logic unit.

To keep track of the CPU steps, the processor maintains a special register, known as the program counter. The program counter points to (contains the address of) the next instruction to be executed. The instruction itself specifies

the operation to be performed, the processor registers to be used and possibly data (or a pointer to data in memory).

The CPU will typically perform the following execution cycle: 1. use the program counter to fetch the next instruction. 2. decode the instruction and fetch data from memory into internal registers as required, 3. perform the instruction and put the result in another internal register and 4. set status bits in the status register as required.