Central Processing Unit (CPU)

A central processing unit (CPU) is the main general-purpose processor in a computer, the chip that fetches, decodes and carries out the instructions of software, from operating systems to wallets and banking apps. Modern CPUs contain several cores that can work on different tasks at once, but each core is designed for flexibility rather than for repeating one calculation at huge scale. That is the job of specialised chips such as the graphics processing unit (GPU) and the application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). In Bitcoin's first years, coins were mined on ordinary CPUs, but specialised hardware soon took over. Some networks, such as Monero, use algorithms designed to keep CPUs competitive, as described under CPU Miner.