The main idea is to divide (termed "split") the processing of a CPU instruction, as defined by the instruction microcode, into a series of independent steps of micro-operations (also called "microinstructions", "micro-op" or "µop"), with storage at the end of each step. This allows the CPUs control logic to handle instructions at the processing rate of the slowest step, which is much faster than the time needed to process the instruction as a single step.