System Architecture

Question 1

What is the purpose of the CPU and what does it stand for?

Answer 1

Central processing unit - the brain of the computer that processes program instructions.

Question 2

Explain the Fetch/Decode/Execute Cycle?

Answer 2

Fetch - Causes the next instruction and any data involved to be fetched from the main memory

Decode- decodes the instruction.

Execute- executes the instruction.

And this repeats..

Question 3

What is the MAR?

Answer 3

Memory Address Register - Stores the address of the instruction/data.

Question 4

What is the MDR?

Answer 4

Memory Data Register - Stores the actual instruction of data.

Question 5

What is the Accumulator?

Answer 5

Stores the arithmetic and logic results.

Question 6

Whats does the program counter do?

Answer 6

Points to the next instruction.

Question 7

Whats is the ALU?

Answer 7

Arithmetic Logic Unit - carries out the arithmetic/logic calculations.

Question 8

What is the CU?

Answer 8

Control Unit - The component of the CPU that manages instructions.

Question 9

What is the CACHE?

Answer 9

A piece of temporary memory. It can refer to a part of the RAM, storage disk, CPU, or an area for storing web pages.

Question 10

Name 3 things that affect the CPU’s performance?

Answer 10

1. Clock Speed
2. Cache Size
3. Number of Cores

Question 11

How does increasing the number of Cores help the speed of CPU?

Answer 11

CPUs with multiple cores have more power to run multiple programs at the same time.