What makes up a CPU?

Answer 1

"The CPU is basically just the processing chip, but I could be wrong."

You're partially right. Yes the CPU is a processing chip but they asked what is made up of.

Physically: Cpu's are made from a silicon crystal which they essentially burn pathways and interconnections into and then fill those paths with copper. etc.

Mathematically: CPU's consist of logical gates that turn on and off based on the data that they are fed from either the user or the software and then the user.

And if you want even more detail a CPU contains whats called an ALU (arithmetic logic unit) which is fed data by the registers in which the ALU adds subtracts or shifts 0's in data (multiplication, division, etc) which is then stored in memory where it can be fetched and fed into it again by the registers. After the data has been essentially processed its fed onto a screen or some form of output.

A cluster of these ALU's and corresponding registers form a core. A CPU i designed myself has 4 ALU's which can process 4 bits or 4 zeros at a time per ALU essentially and each of these ALU's communicate with each other thus forming a 4bit CPU core.