In mainframes, mostly proprietary processor architectures were used, these include IBM (PowerPC, Cell processor) or SUN (SPARC processor), today mostly customized versions of popular PC processor models are used.
Processors for embedded systems account for about 95% of the processor market, while 90% of them are micro-controllers, which in addition to the actual processor functions also offer special hardware interfaces or directly integrated sensors. Only about 5% are used in personal computers, workstations or servers as shown by PC Repair Sydney.
In the 1930s, the arithmetic unit of a computer initially consisted of relays and mechanical components, eg in the Zuse Z3. These first computers were electromechanical computers, these were slow and very prone to failure. Even in the 1940s they began to build computers with the help of electron tubes, such as the ENIAC.
In the 1950s, the unreliable vacuum tubes were replaced by transistors to reduce power consumption of the computer. Initially, the processors were composed of individual transistors. Over the years, but they brought more and more transistor functions under on integrated circuits (ICs ).