CPU

Question 1

What are Registers Used for?

Answer 1

store data, instructions or addresses on the actual processor.

Question 2

What are the two types of registers?

Answer 2

MAR, MDR

Question 3

What Does the MAR do?

Answer 3

Holds the address of the next item of data that is needed by the processor

Question 4

What Does MDR do?

Answer 4

Holds data to be passed to the data bus or Received from the data bus

Question 5

What are the two types of Buses

Answer 5

Address Bus, Data Bus

Question 6

What is an Address bus

Answer 6

a Uni-directional Bus which passes addresses from the CPU to Ram

Question 7

What is a Data Bus

Answer 7

A Multi-directional Bus which carries Data to or from the CPU

Question 8

What is a Control Unit/Bus

Answer 8

A collection of lines which signals the current state of the processor and fetch execute cycle.

Question 9

What types of Control Unit lines are there

Answer 9

Byte Enable Line, Read Line, Write Line, Clock Line, Interrupt Line, Reset Line

Question 10

What Does the Byte Enable Line do

Answer 10

specifies the instruction size of the data being sent/received

Question 11

What Does the Read Line do

Answer 11

initiates a memory read operation

Question 12

What Does the Write line do

Answer 12

Initiates a memory write operation

Question 13

What Does the Clock do

Answer 13

States the pace of the fetch/execute cycle

Question 14

What Does the Interrupt Line do

Answer 14

Used to indicate that an interrupt to the fetch/execute cycle is taking place

Question 15

What Does the Reset Line do

Answer 15

Resets the processor to the Base state

Question 16

What is an ALU used for

Answer 16

to carry out operations that require the use of:
Arithmetic operations
Logical operations

Question 17

What is Clock speed

Answer 17

Clock speed is the rate at which a processor can complete a processing cycle

Question 18

What is Clock Speed measured in

Answer 18

Gigahertz - GHz

Question 19

What is a multicore Processor

Answer 19

A single processor which has two or more separate processing Units called cores

Question 20

Name for Two cores

Answer 20

Dual Core

Question 21

Name for Four cores

Answer 21

Quad Core

Question 22

Name for Eight cores

Answer 22

Octa Core

Question 23

Advantages of Multiple Cores

Answer 23

More instructions which can be processed at once

Question 24

What is the width of a data bus referred to as

Answer 24

Word Size

Question 25

What does increasing word size do

Answer 25

Increases System Performance

Question 26

Steps for Fetch Execute Cycle for Memory Read

Answer 26

1. The processor sets up the address bus with the required address.
2. The processor activates the read line on the control bus
3. An instruction is fetched from the memory location using the data bus and stored in the instruction register.
   4.The instruction in the instruction register is then interpreted by the decoder and carried out.

Question 27

Steps for Fetch Execute Cycle for Memory Write

Answer 27

1. The processor sets up the address bus with the required address.
   2.The processor sets up the data bus with the required data to be written
   3.The control unit write line is activated
   4.Data bus transfers the data to the memory location specified on the address bus

Question 28

Explain why increasing the width of the data bus will improve the system performance

Answer 28

More bits can be fetched in a single operation