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Flashcards by Malachy Moran-Tun, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by Malachy Moran-Tun
about 3 years ago
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Copied by Malachy Moran-Tun
almost 3 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| What is Clock Speed and How does it affect CPU Performance? | > The number of cycles that a single processor core can carry out per second (measured in Hertz, Hz) > A faster clock speed means that more instructions are fetched, decoded, and executed in a second |
| What is the Cache and How does it affect CPU Performance? | > Temporary storage that is extremely fast for the CPU - slower than registers but much faster than requests to / from RAM - It does not require instructions to be fetched via slow buses > Stores frequently used data - the CPU checks the cache first, then the RAM > Too much cache can be detrimental, as there's more data to search through every time data is required > L1 - on the CPU chip, smallest and fastest, most expensive (also known as primary or internal cache) > L2 - on the motherboard or CPU, larger but slower > L3 - on the motherboard, larger again, but slowest |
| What are Cores and How do they affect CPU Performance? | > Each core can process data independently from the rest, allowing for simultaneous processing > It allows for parallel processing and multitasking > Software must be designed to use multiple cores, otherwise there is no performance benefit |
| What is a GPU and How does it affect Performance? | > Graphics processing unit > Contains specialised circuits for handling graphics and image processing > Relieves the processing load on the CPU, freeing it to do other things > Using high-end cards can vastly speed up software that renders graphics, i.e., 3D Design software (CAD) and games |
| What is Pipelining and How does it affect CPU Performance? | > Each core performs one part of the fetch, decode, execute cycle for each instruction, which speeds up performance as it doesn't have to switch operations > Branching can cause issues with pipelining since it may end up processing an instruction that will be skipped after an if statement |
| What is Word Size and How does it affect Performance? | > Number of bits a CPU can process in one cycle (i.e., 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit) > Modern systems have 64-bit architectures, although sometimes have backwards-compatibility |
| What are the Two Types of Parallel Processing and their Differences? | > SIMD - Single Instruction, Multiple Data > Same program can be executed on different data sets at the same time > One Control Unit handles multiple ALUs > MIMD - Multiple Instruction, Multiple Data > Different programs can be executed on different processors at the same time > Multiple Control Units each handle their own ALUs |
| What is Distributed Computing? | > Alternative to Parallel Processing > Uses the Internet to process a large problem > Each node takes on a small part of the problem > Each node has their own memory, unlike Parallel Processing, where it is shared |
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