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18 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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what is the purpose of the CPU?
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it processes data and is where all the searching, sorting, calculations and decision making takes place in the computer
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Where does CPU fetch the data and instructions from and where does it store them?
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from main memory and then stores them in it’s own internal temporary memory areas.
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What is the name of the internal temporary memory areas?
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Registers
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For the fetch part of the cycle to happen, the CPU places the address of the next item in a vital hardware path. What is this called?
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The address bus
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The next step is for the CPU to make sense of the instructions, what is this process called?
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Decode
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The CPU is designed to understand a specific set of commands which are different for every make of CPU. What are these set of commands called?
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Instruction set
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The CPU decodes the instructions but what does it do next?
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Processes the data
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What is the name of the part of the cycle where the actual data processing takes place?
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Execution
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The CPU reads data and programs kept on the backing storage, but where does it store it?
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It stores them temporarily in the IAS’s memory
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Why does the CPU need to store data and programs in the IAS?
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The CPU needs to do this because backing storage is much too slow to be able to run the applications directly.
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The ALU manipulates or acts upon the data. List the name of the parts of the ALU and say what they do?
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Arithmetic part – performs calculations on the data
Logic part – deals with logic and comparisons |
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How is the clock speed measured?
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Cycles per second – 1 cycle per second is also known as 1 hertz
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How many instructions can a computer process at any one time?
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one
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The faster the speed the better the performance, but what is the downside of this fact?
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Makes the CPU hotter so extra cooling fans have to be purchased
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What does “overclocking” mean?
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Some people try to get the most extreme performance out of their CPU. They do this by ‘overclocking’. This means they adjust the clock to run faster than the CPU was really designed for.
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explain what the term dual core means.
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A dual core device means it contains two CPU’s
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List, starting with the first one it looks at, the order the CPU looks at different storage areas it can access.
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Cache, RAM, hard disk
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the cache is larger how does this affect the performance of the CPU?
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The larger the cache, the better the performance because you can store more data locally
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