The characteristics of contemporary processors, input, output and storage devices Flashcards
What does the ALU do?
The ALU carries out the requested operation on A and B and produces an output result.
What does CU stand for?
Control Unit
What does the CU do?
Organises the execution of instructions, including managing the other components in the processor.
What does PC stand for?
Program Counter (not Personal Computer)
What does the PC do?
Contains the address of the next instruction to be performed
What does ACC stand for?
ACCumulator
What does the ACC do?
temporarily holds data for multi step operations
What does MAR stand for?
Memory Address Register
What does the MAR do?
Stores the address given to it by the PC
What does MDR stand for?
Memory Data Register
What does the MDR do?
Holds the contents found at the address held in the MAR, or data which is to be transferred to main emory
What does CIR stand for?
Current Instruction Register
What does the CIR do?
Holds the instruction that is currently being decoded and executed
What are the different types of bus?
data, address, control
What does the data bus do?
carries the data between the processor and other components
What does the address bus do?
identify the address of the location in cache or main memory that is to be read from or written to
What does the control bus do?
carries control signals from the processor to other components. The control bus also carries the clock’s pulses
What factors effect CPU performance?
clock speed, number of cores, cache.
What does ALU stand for?
Arithmetic logic unit
Describe pipelining in the CPU.
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.
What is Von Neumann architecture?
Von Neumann architecture has instructions and data in the same storage space.
What is Harvard architecture?
Harvard architecture has instructions and data in separate storage spaces.
What is contemporary processor architecture?
Uses Von Neuman architecture for the main memory while Harvard is used in the cache.
