ABSTRACT
In the simplest sense, a microprocessor may be thought of as a central processing unit (CPU) on a chip. Technical advances of microprocessors evolve quickly and are driven by progress in ultra large-scale integrated/very large-scale integrated physics and technology; fabrication advances, including reduction in feature size; and improvements in architecture. In the early days of mainframe computers, only a few instructions were available to the programmer and the CPU had to be patched, or its configuration changed, for various applications. The strength of the microprocessor is in its ability to perform simple logical tasks at a high rate of speed. In Complex instruction set computer microprocessors, small register sets, memory to memory operations, large instruction sets, and the use of microcode are typical. Microprocessors may often be highly specialized for a particular application. Just as the logical connections of the microprocessor are the same from family to family, so are the basic instructions.
