CPU
What's a CPU and how does it help us?
What Is A CPU?
CPU or central processing unit is the main processor for the entire system, you can think of it like the CEO of the motherboard
What do I mean by that? anything that happens (even if it's a request to fetch a file from a storage device or tell the GPU to render things) needs to first go through the CPU, from there the CPU transfers information between the different components via physical data lines on the motherboard
So now that we've simplified it, a CPU is a general purpose processor that can do a lot of actions while other devices like GPUs are specialized for certain wordloads
Derivatives Of CPUs
APU - Accelerated Processing Unit
APU is a concept introduced in recent years, it means that the CPU has an integrated GPU
Didn't you say that most modern CPUs have integrated GPUs nowadays?
Yes, indeed, BUT an APU is mostly a word used in recent years for laptops and they mean that they could play games (which level of games is debatable)
NPU - Neural Processing Unit
An NPU is a type of CPU that is designed to work well with AI training and ML (Machine learning) tasks
Why Do We Need It?
Without a central processing unit, we couldn't do anything that requires processing or communicating between different components (NICs, storage, RAM, GPU, USB, etc)