Course Content
Part 1: What Does the CPU Really Do?
What Is a CPU and Why Is It So Important? The Difference Between RAM, Storage, and the CPU What Happens When You Click a Button on Your Computer?
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Lesson 1: What Is a CPU and Why Is It So Important?
Lesson 2: How the CPU, RAM, and Storage Work Together
Lesson 3: What Happens When You Click Something on Your Computer?
Lesson 4: A Closer Look Inside the CPU
Part 2: Now Let’s Dive Into the CPU.
Let’s open the brain of the computer and peek inside!
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Lesson 1: What Are Registers and Why Are They So Fast?
Lesson 2: The ALU — The Tiny Calculator Inside Your Computer
Lesson 3: The Control Unit – The CPU’s Bossy Time-Keeper
Lesson 4: What Is a Clock Cycle and Why Does Speed Matter?
Part 3: How Instructions Are Followed
Show how the CPU fetches, decodes, and runs instructions using a simple loop.
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Lesson 1: What Is an Instruction?
Lesson 2: How Does the CPU Read Instructions One by One?
Lesson 3: The Fetch–Decode–Execute Cycle (Made Super Simple)
Lesson 4: What Happens in Just One Second Inside the CPU?
Part 4: How the CPU Does Math and Logic
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How Flipping a Switch Sends a Message
Why Computers Are Made of Millions of Switches
How Can a Switch Help Make a Choice?
Let’s Build an AND Gate with Switches
OR and NOT — Other Smart Rules Computers Use
Combining Logic to Make Smarter Machines
How Logic Gates Become a Computer’s Brain
🧩 How Computers Use Yes and No to Count Numbers
➕ How to Add Using Wires and Logic Rules
How the CPU Adds and Subtracts with Only Switches
AND, OR, NOT — The CPU’s Way of Making Choices
How the CPU Compares Things and Decides What to Do
Math Tricks Computers Use to Work Faster
Part 5: How the CPU Talks to Memory and Storage
This part will explain how the CPU and memory are like two people trying to talk across a busy room — and why the CPU needs clever helpers like RAM and cache instead of going straight to the hard drive.
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Lesson 1: Why the CPU Doesn’t Talk to the Hard Drive Directly
Lesson 2: What’s a Cache and Why Is It So Fast?
Lesson 3: How the CPU Sends and Gets Data from RAM
Lesson 4: What Happens When There’s Too Much to Remember?
Part 6: Paths and Highways: How CPUs Talk to Everything
So far, we’ve learned how the CPU works with RAM, cache, and storage. But the CPU doesn’t live alone — it has to talk to memory, graphics cards, USB sticks, and more.
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Lesson 1: What Is a Bus? (Not the Kind You Ride)
Lesson 2: How Data Travels Inside a Computer
Lesson 4: How the CPU Works with the Graphics Card and the Motherboard
Lesson 5: What Happens If Two Parts Try to Talk at Once?
How CPUs Are Getting Faster and Smarter
Now: Let’s zoom into what makes modern CPUs so much faster.
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Lesson 1: What Is a Core, and Why Do Some CPUs Have Many?
Lesson 2: How Pipelining Helps the CPU Do More Things at Once
Lesson 3: Why CPUs Get Hot and How CPU Designs Differ
How Computers Think: Inside the CPU

Quick Recap

So far:

  • Lesson 1: We learned what a bus is (address, data, control).

  • Lesson 2: We saw how data actually travels across buses.

Now: Let’s zoom out and see how the CPU works with two of its closest friends:

  • The graphics card (GPU), which draws everything you see.

  • The motherboard, which is like the “city” where every part lives and connects.

🎮 The CPU and the Graphics Card (GPU)

The CPU is good at general tasks — doing math, logic, decisions, running programs.
But when it comes to pictures, games, and videos, the CPU would be way too slow if it did everything alone.

That’s why we have the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).

  • The CPU tells the graphics card (GPU) what to draw.

  • The graphics card (GPU) does the hard work of drawing millions of pixels.

  • The graphics card (GPU) then sends the picture to the monitor.

They talk to each other through a very fast bus called PCI Express (PCIe).

  • PCIe is like a superhighway just for the graphics card (GPU) (and other add-on cards).

  • It has “lanes” (x1, x4, x8, x16). More lanes = more data per second.

  • A modern graphics card (GPU) usually uses x16 lanes, meaning it can move tons of data very quickly.

 

🖼️ Example: Playing a Game

  1. You press a key.

  2. The CPU says: “Player pressed left arrow! Character must move left.”

  3. CPU calculates new game logic (where the character should be).

  4. CPU sends a command over PCIe to the graphics card (GPU) : “Draw character at this new position.”

  5. GPU calculates all the pixels, lighting, shadows, and textures.

  6. GPU sends the final image to the monitor.

Without the graphics card (GPU), your CPU would choke on all that work.

 

🏙️ The Motherboard: The City of the Computer

Think of the motherboard as the city map where all parts are connected:

  • CPU is like the city hall (makes the rules).

  • RAM is like the office buildings (fast desks for working).

  • GPU is like the art museum (makes pictures for everyone to see).

  • Storage (SSD/HDD) is like the library (permanent memory).

  • The motherboard has the roads (buses, traces) that connect all these.

The motherboard also has a special helper called the chipset.

  • It manages connections between the CPU, RAM, storage, and smaller devices (keyboard, mouse, USB).

  • The chipset is like the city’s traffic manager — keeping the flow organized.

 

🔌 How They Physically Connect

  • The CPU sits in a socket on the motherboard.

  • The graphics card (GPU) sits in a PCIe slot.

  • RAM sticks go into memory slots.

  • Storage connects through SATA ports (older) or M.2 NVMe slots (newer, much faster).

All these parts are connected by wires etched onto the motherboard (called traces).
These traces are tiny copper lines, like roads on a map.

 

🌟 Recap

  • The CPU talks to the GPU to make pictures, games, and videos.

  • They use the PCI Express bus, which is super wide and fast.

  • The motherboard connects every part (CPU, RAM, graphics card (GPU), storage) with wires called traces.

  • The chipset helps organize the flow, like a traffic cop.

  • Together, they make sure every part can talk without confusion.

 

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