The Central Processing Unit is the general-purpose processor responsible for executing program instructions in a computer. CPUs are optimized for sequential execution with complex branching logic, which makes them dominant for general computing workloads but suboptimal for the massively parallel matrix operations that dominate modern neural network training and inference.
CPUs remain the majority of compute spending in most enterprises. Web servers, databases, application logic, and most business software run on CPUs. The shift to GPU-based AI workloads has added a new category of compute spending on top of rather than instead of existing CPU infrastructure.
The modern CPU landscape is dominated by x86 architecture (Intel, AMD) and ARM architecture (Apple Silicon, Ampere, Amazon Graviton). ARM's share has grown substantially in data center workloads driven by performance-per-watt advantages, and all major cloud providers now offer ARM-based compute options. The CPU market is more competitive in 2026 than it has been in twenty years.