Talk:Central processing unit

Article Checklist for "Central processing unit"

Workgroup category or categories	Computers Workgroup [Categories OK]
Article status	Developed article: complete or nearly so
Underlinked article?	No
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	David Martin 09:50, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

To learn how to fill out this checklist, please see CZ:The Article Checklist.

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Hi Matt, thanks for importing an article from WP that you wrote. Can I hope that you'll be working on it here at least as much as there? Also, if anyone else made any other edits, we must check that "Content is from Wikipedia?" box. --Larry Sanger 13:23, 16 February 2007 (CST)

Of course. I'm going to remove a lot of red links that I don't think will have articles here in the near future and try and clean up some of the templates that don't exist on CZ. I'm also importing the images it uses that can be used here. I did actually check the box you mentioned in the original import, but it doesn't automagically stay checked in subsequent revisions. Do I need to manually check it for each revision I commit here (assuming that these subsequent revisions are applied on CZ exclusively)? -- Matt Britt 13:32, 16 February 2007 (CST)

Some changes have been done to the article to simplify the summary of the definition, move the CPU operation section above the history section for better visibility, and restructure the CPU operation section for the purpose of a more concise description. Also, the terms instruction set architecture and program counter have been given their own entries and their ref tags removed from the main body of this article. None of the core information has been changed; simply reworded in more concise terms to allow for an easier read. No changes have been made to the history and implementation sections, as they are largely the advanced explanations of the term and need no simplification. Thanks! --Dominic DeStefano 16:03, 30 March 2007 (CDT)

Wikipedia Status?

Can we get some clarification on the article status vis a vis Wikipedia? Does it need to be marked or not? Greg Woodhouse 11:13, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

HUGE article

Can this article could be broken out a little more? On CZ the policy is more of a "layman's definition" on the main article, and if someone wants to dig deeper they can. Maybe History of the CPU, CPU Manufacturing, CPU Design and Implementation etc. need to get broken out into their own articles? --Eric M Gearhart 16:01, 8 April 2007 (CDT)

I'm not sure it's necessary. The article seems rather accessible to me, covering the fundamentals of processors in enough depth to be of value to a layperson, without using a great deal of jargon or requiring specialist knowledge to understand. Greg Woodhouse 10:51, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

I should add that I think there is plenty of room for subarticles such as those you mention. In fact, I had originally thought that such things as RISC vs. CISC processors, multi-core processors would have been covered here, but it may be more appropriate to go into detail in other articles. Greg Woodhouse 11:05, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

history of computing

We are starting work on history of computing, and if no one objects, I might move the history part of this somewhere to match the style we're using there. The contents of this history section of this article is much more about computers and computer architecture as a whole than just about the CPU part of a computer. It's useful material (thanks to those who created it).Pat Palmer 09:07, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

Approval nomination

We still need clarification on the WP issue, but this article seems accessible, providing reasonably good coverage of the topic at an appropriate level, and quite stable. I'm going ahead and nominating it for approval. Nice work. Greg Woodhouse 11:25, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

I'd rather wait and not approve this yet. The corpus of Computers Workgroup articles is still in flux. A lot of this information crosses over with the information in computer architecture (or, it ought to). I also think the article is too long, and would benefit from having some topics broken out into subtopics. Finally, it takes a lot of work to comb through an article getting it ready for "Approval". I frankly would rather any editors/authors we have spend their time helping us grow the corpus of related articles and help stabilize them into a working form for the long run. Temporarily snapshotting an article by "approving" it will make this work of seeking the best inter-article relationships more awkward. I find myself constantly arguing against seeking early approval. This article, though full of good material, is far from as good as it could be. Finally, I don't know that we have enough deep experts working in Citizendium to approve this particular article. Processor architecture is a huge topic and, although this is a very good start, I don't feel that it's done yet. Sorry to sound like a party pooper :-( Pat Palmer 11:49, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

If it seems "stable", that's probably because there are not enough authors active in the area yet (in my opinion). I'd work on it but can't, right now, for lack or time. There are articles I feel are more urgent. I know enough to work on it, but I really want to get cracking on Java and .NET, which are where I'm actively working these days. Pat Palmer 11:52, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

grooming for approval

I'm starting to pick at this article to get it ready for approval, since the Computers Workgroup seems to strongly desire to get an article approved! Pat Palmer 12:43, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

let's break out history part

I would come closer to finding this ready if we could break out the history section into a new article, as I am beginning to recommend as a general strategy at CZ_Talk:Computers_Workgroup#need_to_break_out_history_parts_from_some_articles . If no one objects, that's what I'd like to do. That allows us to deal with the potential duplication which is happening across articles when authors start writing about the history of a technology. I think it will be much easier to agree on the current technology description if we break out the history, and also, that will help us organize the relationships for all the history of computing type articles. Pat Palmer 12:24, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

I just did it. Pat Palmer 12:43, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

Further reading

I think the pipelining and SIMD links under further reading should become references instead. Pat Palmer 12:43, 14 May 2007 (CDT)