Microprocessor

A microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a computer's central processing unit (CPU) on a single integrated circuit (IC, or microchip).The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used for electronic calculators, using binary-coded decimal (BCD) arithmetic on 4-bit words.

Intel 4004, the first general-purpose, commercial microprocessor

A different approach to improving a computer's performance is to add extra processors, as in symmetric multiprocessing designs, which have been popular in servers and workstations since the early 1990s.A multi-core processor is simply a single chip containing more than one microprocessor core, effectively multiplying the potential performance with the number of cores (as long as the operating system and software is designed to take advantage of more than one processor).

Pentium D dual core processors