Characteristics of the CPU (AQA GCSE Computer Science)

Characteristics of the CPU

What are the common characteristics of the CPU?

• There are 3 common characteristics 

  • Clock speed

  • Cache size

  • Number of processor cores

• Each of these characteristics has a significant impact on the performance of the CPU

How do the characteristics of the CPU affect performance?

Clock speed

• The clock speed is measured in Hertz (Hz)

• The clock speed measures the number of fetch-decode-execute cycles that can take place in 1 second

• The faster the clock speed, the more instructions can be fetched and executed per second

• Modern computers have a clock speed in Gigahertz (GHz), meaning billion

• A clock speed of 3.5GHz can perform up to 3.5 billion instructions per second

 Cache size

• Cache is very small, very fast memory on or close to the CPU 

• Cache is used as temporary storage to provide quick access to a copy of frequently used instructions and data

• The larger the cache size, the more frequently used instructions or data can be stored

• This results in the CPU having to complete fewer fetch cycles from memory (RAM), speeding up the performance

• Cache also has a significantly faster read/write speed than RAM, making it much quicker to retrieve instructions from there instead of from memory (RAM) 

Number of processor cores

• A processor core works like it is its own CPU

• Multiple core processors mean they have multiple separate processing units that can fetch, decode and execute instructions at the same time

• For example, a dual-core processor would have 2 processing units, each with their own

  • Control Unit (CU)

  • Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU)

  • Registers 

• Multi-core processors can run more powerful programs with greater ease

• Multiple cores increase the performance of the CPU by working with the clock speed

  • Example: A quad-core CPU (4 cores), running at a clock speed of 3Ghz

    • 4 cores x 3GHz

    • 4 x 3 billion instructions

    • 12 billion instructions per second