Introduction to Registers

Introduction to Registers
Computers have become part of our life and today in the digital world the children are born with mobile phones and it is the first toy for them to play with. More than half of our population work with computers without understanding the basic parts of it and how it works. A computer consists of 3 basic components viz., a central processing unit (CPU), Memory to temporarily store results, and Storage to store data permanently. CPU in turn contains three main components namely a. The arithmetic logic unit, b. Control unit and c. Register Memory. The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is the heart of a computer and it executes program codes, does arithmetic calculations, logical comparisons as instructed, and store the final outcome in storage. It takes data and executable instructions from the main memory and processes them. While doing so it needs some working space to store intermediate results and special instructions and the stored values should be retrievable faster. Register does this function effectively and let’s study this in detail in this article.

Types of Registers

Before getting into let’s understand the functionalities first.

1. Functions of Register

It is typically a tiny memory unit, not part of the main memory of the computer (Random Access Memory (RAM) or Read-only Memory (ROM)) resides in the CPU. They are positioned in the computer hierarchy a level above the main memory. The Control Unit of the computer takes the data from the disk storage (Secondary storage) and Program codes from the library and stores the relevant instruction and data in the main memory and instructs CPU to process it. CPU is the brain of the computer that processes the instruction and data and delivers the result.
The process may involve multiple steps and the results of the intermediate steps and other parameters like address, data will have to be stored in memory units for smooth continuity. The main memory of the computer cannot fulfill this requirement as the speed of storing and retrieval is not fast. Register memory fills the gap and provides faster storage and retrieval of the contents.
They store data, addresses, and instructions with a size of 32 bits to 64 bits, and the power of the CPU is determined by the number of Registers and its size. The big-sized can be split into smaller sized units to hold multiple data. One dimensional array or vector can be operated simultaneously using these registers and such processors are called vector processors. There are different types that are categorized by their contents, instructions, and uses. Some of the categories are accumulating values, data storage, Address storage, next Instruction, etc.
Registers can be grouped functionally under 2 groups:

1.