Unit 1 Lesson 2 - Processor Performance

Question 1

What are the 3 main factors affecting the performance of the Processor?

Answer 1

Clock Speed
Number of Cores
Cache Size

Question 2

What is meant by Clock Speed?

Answer 2

Clock Speed represents the speed a computer processor can FDE.
Example: 4GHz would mean 4 Billion times per second

Question 3

What is meant by Number of Cores?

Answer 3

The amount of Processing Units which a computer has.

Each core is theoretically able to process a different instruction at the same time. This is referred to as Parallel Processing.

Some software may not be able to utilise multi-core computers

Question 4

What is the definition of Parallel Processing?

Answer 4

Using several processor cores working at the same time.

Question 5

What is Cache Memory?

Answer 5

Cache is a small amount of Extremely fast but expensive memory. It stores recently used data and instructions.

Cache Memory is very close to Processing Unit itself which is why it is so fast to access.

Question 6

Describe the difference between Level 1 Cache and Level 2 Cache.

Answer 6

Level 1 Cache has smaller capacity but is faster to access

Level 2 Cache has bigger capacity but takes longer to access

Question 7

Describe what is meant by Pipelining

Answer 7

Pipelining is a technique which overlaps the stages of FDE.

The aim of Pipelining is to reduce the amount of time the Processing Unit is left idle.