Chapter 2 - Processor perfromance

Question 1

What are the 3 main factors affecting processor performance?

Answer 1

• Clock speed
• Number of cores linked together on a single chip
• The amount and type of cache memory

Question 2

How does clock speed affect processor performance?

Answer 2

A CPU cannot perform operations faster than the clock cycle (The time taken for the clock to go 0 > 1 > 0) so the greater the clock speed the faster the clock cycle meaning the faster the instruction will be executed

Question 3

How does number of cores affect processor performance?

Answer 3

An X-cored processor has X processors linked together in the same integrated circuit and each core is theoretically able to process a different instruction at the saem time with its own fetch-execute cycle making the processor X times faster