Does it just affect the speed at which the computer runs? Like how fast it boots up / shuts down, how fast browser pages load, how fast it opens / closes applications, and how fast applications run (e.g. photoshop, Final Cut Pro, etc.)?
In: Technology
All programmed instructions have to go through the central processing unit (CPU). It handles all of the computations and can instruct other programmed instructions to go to other sub-systems like your memory, storage, video cards.
It’s speed is dictated by how fast it can perform these commands denotes in its clock cycles in this modern era of computing we call GHz or gigahertz or billions of cycles per second. That’s what the cpu does. It’s the brains of your computer.
It does the computing.
As for what that means for your computer, most tasks aren’t actually intensive. A decent CPU will load and render web-pages pretty fast and run most apps fine. For web pages now, it takes a lot longer to download the page than for your CPU to interpret it (images, multiple download sources). For booting up and application startup the bigger deal is your hard drive read bandwidth and memory (RAM). Generally speaking, a whole chunk of code and data is loaded into RAM when you boot up or start an application, so a faster hard drive is going to make that process faster, whereas a faster CPU won’t normally help (unless the application is doing a lot of computing on start-up).
What your processor is actually doing at any given time is more interesting. It is constantly switching back and forth between all of your applications (threads) doing a little bit of execution on each. The instructions are loaded into RAM in machine code (x64 for most desktops/laptops), but a lot of your applications are actually interpreted to some degree, so the actual machine code being run is then simulating another virtual processor and loading text instructions from some script files to interpret. This is actually how all webpages work (JavaScript is downloaded from a server and then interpreted by your browser).
The CPU also connects to and controls pretty much everything else in the system at the hardware level. It controls your HDD/SSD, GPU, USB peripherals etc. using “driver” code.
If your computer is a human body:
The case is your skin and bones, holding it all together
The hard drive is your long term memory, storing things to call later
The RAM is your short term memory, storing things you need now
The GPU is the part of your brain that processes sight, taking data from the CPU and turning it into what you see
The CPU is your brain, processing all your tasks and telling everything what to do
The power supply is your stomach and lungs, providing energy to run
More ram means you can think about more things at once, a faster CPU means you can process everything faster and act accordingly, a bigger hard drive means you can remember more stuff long term, a better GPU let’s you go through images faster so everything you see is smoother.
The cpu is the central processing unit. It’s the brain that all other parts is connected to. Everything else is done at the instructions and data generated by the cpu. All of the above and everything is the weight answer.
The CPU IS the computer. In other words, it is the component responsible for all the computing.
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