Hands-On Concurrency with Rust

The CPU

The CPU is a device that interprets a stream of instructions, manipulating storage and other devices connected to it in the process. The simplest model of a CPU, and the one that is often introduced first in undergrad computer science, is that a CPU receives an instruction from some nebulous place, performs the interpretation, receives the next instruction, interprets that, and so forth. The CPU maintains an internal pace via an oscillator circuit, and all instructions take a defined number of oscillator pulses—or clock cycles—to execute. In some CPU models, every instruction will take the same number of clock cycles to execute, and in others the cycle count of instructions will vary. Some CPU instructions modify registers, have very ...