Difference between core and processor

Question

What is the difference between a core and a processor   I ve already looked for it on Google  but I m just having multi-core and multi-processor definition  but it doesn t match what I am looking for

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An image may say more than a thousand words:

An image may say more than a thousand words

* Figure describing the complexity of a modern multi-processor, multi-core system.

Source:

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-performance-counter-monitor-a-better-way-to-measure-cpu-utilization

User · Answer

In the early days   like before the 90s   the processors weren t able to do multi tasks that efficiently   coz a single processor could handle just a single task   so when we used to say that my antivirus microsoft word vlc etc  softwares are all running at the same time   that isn t actually true  When I said a processor could handle a single process at a time   I meant it  It actually would process a single task   then it used to pause that task   take another task   complete it if its a short one or again pause it and add it to the queue   then the next  But this  pause  that I mentioned was so small  appx  1ns  that you didn t understand that the task has been paused  Eg  On vlc while listening to music there are other apps running simultaneously but as I told you   one program at a time   so the vlc is actually pausing in between for ns so you dont underatand it but the music is actually stopping in between   But this was about the old processors     Now-a- days processors ie 3rd gen pcs have multi cored processors  Now the  cores  can be compared to a 1st or 2nd gen processors itself   embedded onto a single chip  a single processor  So now we understood what are cores ie they are mini processors which combine to become a processor  And each core can handle a single process at a time or multi threads as designed for the OS  And they folloq the same steps as I mentioned above about the single processor    Eg  A i7 6gen processor has 8 cores   ie 8 mini processors in 1 i7   ie its speed is 8x times the old processors  And this is how multi tasking can be done   There could be hundreds of cores in a single processor Eg  Intel i128   I hope I explaned this well

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I have read all answers  but this link was more clear explanation for me about difference between CPU Processor  and Core  So I m leaving here some notes from there  The main difference between CPU and Core is that the CPU is an electronic circuit inside the computer that carries out instruction to perform arithmetic  logical  control and input output operations while the core is an execution unit inside the CPU that receives and executes instructions

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Intel s picture is helpful  as shown by Tortuga s best answer  Here s a caption for it   Processor  One semiconductor chip  the CPU  central processing unit  seated in one socket  circa 1950s-2010s  Over time  more functions have been packed onto the CPU chip  Prior to the 1950s releases of single-chip processors  one processor might have spread across multiple chips  In the mid 2010s the system-on-a-chip chips made it slightly more sketchy to equate one processor to one chip  though that s generally what people mean by processor  as in  this computer has an i7 processor  or  this computer system has four processors    Core  One block of a CPU  executing one instruction at a time   You ll see people say one instruction per clock cycle  but some CPUs use multiple clock cycles for some instructions

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A core is usually the basic computation unit of the CPU - it can run a single program context  or multiple ones if it supports hardware threads such as hyperthreading on Intel CPUs   maintaining the correct program state  registers  and correct execution order  and performing the operations through ALUs  For optimization purposes  a core can also hold on-core caches with copies of frequently used memory chunks    A CPU may have one or more cores to perform tasks at a given time  These tasks are usually software processes and threads that the OS schedules  Note that the OS may have many threads to run  but the CPU can only run X such tasks at a given time  where X   number cores   number of hardware threads per core  The rest would have to wait for the OS to schedule them whether by preempting currently running tasks or any other means   In addition to the one or many cores  the CPU will include some interconnect that connects the cores to the outside world  and usually also a large  last-level  shared cache  There are multiple other key elements required to make a CPU work  but their exact locations may differ according to design  You ll need a memory controller to talk to the memory  I O controllers  display  PCIe  USB  etc     In the past these elements were outside the CPU  in the complementary  chipset   but most modern design have integrated them into the CPU   In addition the CPU may have an integrated GPU  and pretty much everything else the designer wanted to keep close for performance  power and manufacturing considerations  CPU design is mostly trending in to what s called system on chip  SoC    This is a  classic  design  used by most modern general-purpose devices  client PC  servers  and also tablet and smartphones   You can find more elaborate designs  usually in the academy  where the computations is not done in basic  core-like  units

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CPU is a central processing unit  Since 2002 we have only single core processor i e  we will only perform a single task or a program at a time   For having multiple programs run at a time we have to use the multiple processor for executing multi processes at a time so we required another motherboard for that and that is very expensive   So  Intel introduced the concept of hyper threading i e  it will convert the single CPU into two virtual CPUs i e we have two cores for our task  Now the CPU is single  but it is only pretending  masqueraded  that it has a dual CPU and performs multiple tasks  But having real multiple cores will be better than that so people develop making multi-core processor i e  multiple processors on a single box i e  grabbing a multiple CPU on single big CPU  I e  multiple cores

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Let s clarify first what is a CPU and what is a core  a central processing unit CPU  can have multiple core units  those cores are a processor by itself  capable of execute a program but it is self contained on the same chip   In the past one CPU was distributed among quite a few chips  but as Moore s Law progressed they made to have a complete CPU inside one chip  die   since the 90 s the manufacturer s started to fit more cores in the same die  so that s the concept of Multi-core   In these days is possible to have hundreds of cores on the same CPU  chip or die  GPUs  Intel Xeon  Other technique developed in the 90 s was simultaneous multi-threading  basically they found that was possible to have another thread in the same single core CPU  since most of the resources were duplicated already like ALU  multiple registers   So basically a CPU can have multiple cores each of them capable to run one thread or more at the same time  we may expect to have more cores in the future  but with more difficulty to be able to program efficiently

[cpu] Difference between core and processor

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