(1) For chip manufacturing, see
chip feature size.
(2) To manipulate data in the computer. The computer is said to be processing no matter what action it is taking upon the data; whether the data are actually being updated in a database or just being displayed on screen.
In order to evaluate a computer system's performance, the time it takes to process data internally is often analyzed separately from the time it takes to get data in and out of the computer. The I/O (input/output) is usually much more time consuming than the processing. For an explanation of how the computer processes data in memory, where all processing takes place, see
computer and
3 C's.
(3) Software running in the computer. When a computer is booted, numerous processes are started by the operating system, while certain applications may also start their processes that continue to run in the background. In a Windows computer, pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del launches the Task Manager, which displays all running processes. In the Mac, the Activity Monitor in the Applications/Utilities folder shows the processes. See
Windows processes.