Control unit

Control unit

The control unit (called a control system or central controller) manages the computer's various components; it reads and interprets (decodes) the program instructions, transforming them into control signals that activate other parts of the computer. [63] Control systems in advanced computers may change the order of execution of some instructions to further improve performance.
A key component common to all CPUs is the program counter , a special memory cell (a register ) that keeps track of which location in memory the next instruction is to be read from. [64]
The control system's function is as follows-note that this is often a simplified description, and some of these steps may be performed concurrently or in a different order depending on the type of CPU:
1. Read the code for the next instruction from the cell indicated by the program counter.
2. Decode the numerical code for the instruction into a set of commands or signals for every one of the other systems.
3. Increment the program counter so it points to the next instruction.
4. Read whatever data the instruction requires from cells in memory (or perhaps from an input device). The location of this required data is typically stored within the instruction code.
5. Provide the necessary data with an ALU or register.
6. If the instruction requires an ALU or specialized hardware to complete, instruct the hardware to perform the requested operation.
7. Write the result from the ALU back to a memory location or to a register or perhaps an output device.
8. Jump back to step (1).
Since program counter is (conceptually) just another set of memory cells, it can be changed by calculations done in the ALU. Adding 100 to the program counter would cause the next instruction to be read from a place 100 locations further down the program. Instructions that modify the program counter are called "jumps" and allow for loops (instructions that are repeated by the computer) and often conditional instruction execution (both examples of control flow ).
The sequence of operations that the control unit goes through to process an instruction is in itself like a short computer program, as wll as, in some more complex CPU designs, there is another yet smaller computer called a microsequencer , which runs a microcode program that causes all of these events to happen.