Chapter 1 - Part 3 Flashcards
What does the term concurrency refer to?
A computer system doing multiple things at once.
What does the term parallelism refer to?
A computer system taking advantage of concurrency to make a system run faster.
Describe the cache organization of an i7 processor.
An i7 processor has 4 cores. Each core has 2 L1 caches, one for instructions and one for data, and one L2 cache. Each core shares the L3 cache.
What is hyperthreading?
A technique that allows a single CPU to execute multiple flows of control.
What do hyperthreading cores need multiple of for hardware.
They require multiple copies of program counters and register files.
What is instruction level parallelism?
The ability for a processor to execute multiple instructions at one time.
What is a clock cycle?
The time between two adjacent pulses of the oscillator that sets the tempo of the CPU. It’s usually measured in Mhz or Ghz.
What is a superscalar processor?
A processor that can execute instructions at a rate of more than 1 per clock cycle.
What does SIMD stand for?
Single Instruction Multiple Data
What is special about an SIMD instruction?
It can cause multiple operations to be performed in parallel.
