1.1.3 Factors affecting CPU performance

Question 1

Clock Speed

Answer 1

The CPU’s clock sends a pulse at fixed intervals to trigger the next stage of the fetch, decode, execute (FDE) cycle.

The higher the clock speed, the more pulses are sent per second, so more instructions can be executed in the same amount of time

Question 2

Cores

Answer 2

• Each core of a CPU is capable of processing instructions independently.
• Each core has its own Control Unit (CU), and Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU), but the cores share access to cache and main memory.
• Multiple cores allows a CPU to process multiple instructions at the same time.

Question 3

Cache memory

Answer 3

• Cache memory is a small amount of very fast memory inside the CPU.
• In comparison to the cache, accessing the Random Access Memory (RAM) is a very slow operation.
• By storing frequently accessed data and instructions in cache memory we can avoid the process of accessing the RAM