An Arithmetic Logic Unit, or ALU, is an electronic component found in CPUs and elsewhere, which performs various logical and arithmetic operations on the data given to it as input (See also accumulator), with the exact operation depending upon the commands it is given (See also opcode, machine language, assembly language).

These commands might include such things as:

And likely include many other variations on the above. See also RISC, CISC.

In processors that handle floating point, the floating point operations are usually taken care of in a separate floating point unit, while the ALU takes care of integer operations.

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