FACTORS AFECTING PERFORMANCE OF THE CPU Flashcards
1
Q
What factors affect the performance of the CPU?
A
- clock speed
- cache size
- no. of cores
2
Q
What is clock speed?
A
- no. of cycles per s (measured in Hz)
- modern processors operate at billions of cycles per s (GHz)
- (3.2 GHz clock speed = 3.2 bil instructions can be fetched per s)
3
Q
How does clock speed affect CPU performance?
A
the greater the clock speed, the faster instructions will be executed
4
Q
What is cache?
A
- temporary storage of data and instructions being written to/read from
- stores recently used data and instructions so they can be accessed quicker than if they were stored in RAM
- located on/near CPU
5
Q
What are the 3 levels of cache and their properties?
A
- level 1 cache: very fast, small capacity
- level 2 cache: fast, medium capacity
- level 3 cache: slow, large capacity
6
Q
How does cache size affect CPU performance?
A
the more data stored in cache, the more efficiently the CPU runs
7
Q
What is a core?
A
a copy of the processor
(eg: a quad-core processor would have 4 separate processing units each with its own registers, ALU etc.)
8
Q
How does the no. of cores affect the performance of the CPU?
A
(theoretically) CPUs with multiple cores have more power to run multiple programs at 1 time (however some softwares are unable to take full advantage of all 4 processors)
