The characteristics of contemporary processors, input, output and storage devices

Question 1

What does the ALU do?

Answer 1

The ALU carries out the requested operation on A and B and produces an output result.

Question 2

What does CU stand for?

Answer 2

Control Unit

Question 3

What does the CU do?

Answer 3

Organises the execution of instructions, including managing the other components in the processor.

Question 4

What does PC stand for?

Answer 4

Program Counter (not Personal Computer)

Question 5

What does the PC do?

Answer 5

Contains the address of the next instruction to be performed

Question 6

What does ACC stand for?

Answer 6

ACCumulator

Question 7

What does the ACC do?

Answer 7

temporarily holds data for multi step operations

Question 8

What does MAR stand for?

Answer 8

Memory Address Register

Question 9

What does the MAR do?

Answer 9

Stores the address given to it by the PC

Question 10

What does MDR stand for?

Answer 10

Memory Data Register

Question 11

What does the MDR do?

Answer 11

Holds the contents found at the address held in the MAR, or data which is to be transferred to main emory

Question 12

What does CIR stand for?

Answer 12

Current Instruction Register

Question 13

What does the CIR do?

Answer 13

Holds the instruction that is currently being decoded and executed

Question 14

What are the different types of bus?

Answer 14

data, address, control

Question 15

What does the data bus do?

Answer 15

carries the data between the processor and other components

Question 16

What does the address bus do?

Answer 16

identify the address of the location in cache or main memory that is to be read from or written to

Question 17

What does the control bus do?

Answer 17

carries control signals from the processor to other components. The control bus also carries the clock’s pulses

Question 18

What factors effect CPU performance?

Answer 18

clock speed, number of cores, cache.

Question 18

What does ALU stand for?

Answer 18

Arithmetic logic unit

Question 19

Describe pipelining in the CPU.

Answer 19

When a task has had it’s fetch section completed and moves onto the decode section, a new task starts it’s fetch section while the previous is being decoded. A third task can be fetched while the first two are executing and decoding.

Question 20

What is Von Neumann architecture?

Answer 20

Von Neumann architecture has instructions and data in the same storage space.

Question 21

What is Harvard architecture?

Answer 21

Harvard architecture has instructions and data in separate storage spaces.

Question 22

What is contemporary processor architecture?

Answer 22

Uses Von Neuman architecture for the main memory while Harvard is used in the cache.