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Processor Overview At the heart of every computer is a special motherboard chip called the processor, which determines, to a great extent, the power of the computer. The processor is also called the CPU (central processing unit) or microprocessor. The processor executes instructions, performs calculations, and coordinates input/output operations. Each motherboard has electronic chips that work with the CPU and are designed to exact specifications. Whether these other electronic components can keep up with the processor depends on the individual component’s specifications. The major processor manufacturers today are Intel, Motorola, VIA, Samsung, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and AMD (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.). Intel and AMD are the predominant manufacturers for desktop and laptop processors, and the other manufacturers target the mobile/smartphone markets.Processor Basics All processors use 1s and 0s. One 1 or one 0 is a bit. Eight bits grouped together are a byte. To a processor, the letter A looks like 01000001. Each character on a keyboard appears as 1 byte or 8 bits to the processor. Approximately 1,000 bytes is a kilobyte (kB). (1kB is 1,024 bytes to be exact, but the computer industry rounds off the number to the nearest thousand for ease of calculation.) Ten kilobytes is shown as 10K or 10kB. Approximately 1 million bytes is a megabyte (MB), but a true megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes. 540 megabytes is shown as 540MB, or 540M. Approximately 1 billion bytes (1,073,741,824 bytes) is a gigabyte and is shown as 1GB or 1G.When information needs to be expressed exactly, binary prefixes are used. For example, when describing a value of 210 (1,024), instead of saying that it is 1 kilobyte, which people tend to think of as approximately 1,000 bytes, the term kibibyte (KiB) is used. When describing a value of 220, or 1,048,576, the term mebibyte (MiB) is used. Table 2.1 shows the terms used with computer storage capacity and binary prefixes when exact measurements are...