1.1.2 - CPU performance

Question 1

What are the 3 common characteristics of the CPU?

Answer 1

Clock speed,
Cache size,
Number of cores.

Question 2

Clock speed

Answer 2

Determines the number of FDE cycles performed per second.
It is measured in Hertz (Hz).
Many modern processors operate at billions of cycles per second, known as Gigahertz (GHz).
eg. 3.2 GHz clock speed = 3.2 billion instructions can be fetched per second.

The faster the clock speed, the more instructions can be fetched and executed per second.

Question 3

Cache size

Answer 3

Very small, fast-working memory located near the CPU.
Temporary storage of data to provide quick access.
Much quicker to receive data from the cache rather than main memory (RAM).

The larger the cache size, the more frequently instructions or data can be stored, resulting in the CPU having to complete fewer fetch cycles from memory (RAM) and speeding up the performance.

Question 4

Number of cores

Answer 4

A core works like its own copy of the CPU.
For example, a quad-core processor would have 4 separate processing units, each with its own: Control Unit (CU), Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU), Registers and Accumulator.

The higher the number of cores, the more tasks a CPU can handle simultaneously, resulting in high performance.