Characteristics of the CPU

Question 1

What are the common characteristics of the CPU? (3 marks)

Answer 1

1. Clock speed
2. Cache size
3. Number of cores

Question 2

How does the clock speed of the CPU affect performance? (4 marks)

Answer 2

1. Measured in Hertz (Hz)
2. Measures number of fetch-decode-execute cycles that can take place in 1 second
3. The faster the clock speed, the more instructions can be fetched and executed per second
4. Modern computers have a clock speed in Gigahertz (GHz)

Question 3

How does the cache size of the CPU affect performance? (5 marks)

Answer 3

1. Very small, very fast memory on or close to the CPU
2. Temporary storage to provide quick access to a copy of frequently used instructions and data
3. The larger the cache size, the more frequently used instructions or data can be stored
4. The CPU having to complete fewer fetch cycles from memory (RAM), speeding up the performance
5. Has a significantly faster read/write speed than RAM, so much faster to retrieve instructions from there than memory (RAM)

Question 4

How does a core work? (1 mark)

Answer 4

Like it is its own CPU

Question 5

What would a dual-core processor have? (2 marks)

Answer 5

1. Two processing units, each with their own:
2. Control Unit, Arithmetic Logic Unit, Registers, Accumulator

Question 6

What are multi-core processors? (2 marks)

Answer 6

1. Multiple separate processing units
2. That can decode, fetch and execute instructions at the same time

Question 7

How does the number of cores / multi-core processors affect performance? (2 marks)

Answer 7

1. Can run powerful programs with greater ease
2. Increase the performance of the CPU by working with clock speed