Year 11 CPU architecture Revision 2

• Computing
• Upper Secondary (Key Stage 4)
• Lower Secondary (Key Stage 3)

Do now: State 3 characteristics that affects a computer's performance.

Extention - Define the term overclocking.

Learning objective

Strengthening - Recall key CPU characteristics

Excelling - Complete exam level answers. 

• Cache
• Cores
• Clock speed

The three C's

Clock speed

Everything in a computer happens on the pulse of

the internal clock​

Therefore, the faster the clock speed, the faster the

instructions are processed​

Clock speed

• 1 hertz (Hz) = 1 instruction (1 cycle) 

• 1 kilohertz (kHz) = 1000 cycles per second

• 1 Megahertz (MHz) = 1,000,000 cycles per second

• 1 Gigahertz (GHz) = 1,000,000,000 cycles per second

1 hertz

1. 1000 cycles per second
2. 1 instruction (1 cycle)
3. 1,000,000,000 cycles per second
4. 1,000,000 cycles per second

1 Gigahertz (GHz)

1. 1000 cycles per second
2. 1 instruction (1 cycle)
3. 1,000,000,000 cycles per second
4. 1,000,000 cycles per second

What does clock speed measure?

1. How much storage you have
2. The speed of your RAM
3. The resolution of your image.
4. How many instructions are executed a second.

9,000,000 cycles per second

1. 9 Gigahertz
2. 9 Megahertz (MHz)
3. 9 hertz (Hz)
4. 9 kilohertz (kHz)

Cores

A CPU always has a set of cores (1,2,4,8), each core is able to handle one FDE cycle at a time.

The more cores a CPU has, the greater the number of instructions it can process in a given space of time.

 

4 cores

1. 1 instructions
2. 5 instructions
3. 3 instructions
4. 4 instructions

Which processor would you prefer, (Why?)
1GHz Dual-core , or a
3GHz single core processor?

Cache memory

Cache memory is temporary storage for frequently accessed data.

 

Cache memory is closer to the CPU than RAM, meaning that it can provide data and instructions to the CPU at a faster rate.

What are the three c's?

Which is theoretically faster?

1. Dual core 4ghz
2. Quad core 1ghz
3. Single core 8ghz
4. Quad core 3ghz

Mark scheme