Control Unit 

Now we need a digital circuit to control everything in our computer. So we must have a control unit that would perform the following:

Coordinate the operation of the other units in the computer
Translate the program instructions into micro-operations to be performed by the different units. This is called decoding
Provide the control signals for other units to perform the different micro-operations required to execute each instruction.

The ALU and registers make up the computer's data path . The data path and control unit form the Central Processing Unit or CPU .


Fig. m010115.1 shows a symbolic diagram of the basic components of a computer.


Fig. m010115.1 A Symbolic view of the main components of a computer