CPU Flashcards
What does the CPU stand for?
Central Processing Unit
What does the CPU do?
It processes all the data and instructions that make the system work by fetching and executing instructions stored in memory.
What impacts the processing power of the CPU?
Clock speed, number of cores, cache size
What are the 3 main parts of the CPU?
The Control Unit, the Arithmetic and Logic Unit and the cache.
What does the CU do?
Execute instructions by following the fetch-decode-execute cycle and controls the flow of data within the CPU.
What does the ALU do?
Calculations and logic operations, such as AND, OR and NOT
What is stored in the cache?
Frequently used data so the CPU can access it quicker next time it’s needed.
What is clock speed?
The number of instructions a single processor core can carry out in a second.
Why would increasing the number of cores increase the CPU performance
Each core in the CPU can independently process data, so the more cores, the more instructions the CPU can carry out at once.
What would increasing cache size do?
It would give the CPU faster access to more data it needs to process.
