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Computer Architecture and Processing Systems

Factors that affect processing speed

  • 3 things to know
  • AS Unit 2

Overview

Clock speed, the number of cores, the width of the buses, the amount and speed of main memory, the size of the cache and the speed of secondary storage, and why no one figure decides performance.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Process

What does the clock speed of a processor measure?

Key term

What is a gigahertz?

Process

A processor is clocked at 2 GHz. How long does one clock cycle last?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What does the clock speed of a processor measure?

    Model answer

    Clock speed measures how many clock pulses are generated each second, and is quoted in hertz.

  2. 2

    What is a gigahertz?

    Model answer

    One gigahertz is one thousand million clock cycles per second.

  3. 3

    A processor is clocked at 2 GHz. How long does one clock cycle last?

    Model answer

    One cycle lasts 5 × 10⁻¹⁰ seconds, or 0.5 nanoseconds, because the cycle time is one divided by 2 × 10⁹.

  4. 4

    Why can two processors with the same clock speed perform differently?

    Model answer

    Processors differ in how much work each cycle achieves, so cache size, instruction set, pipelining and the number of cores all change performance at an identical clock speed.

  5. 5

    What is a multi-core processor?

    Model answer

    A multi-core processor holds two or more complete processing units on one chip, each able to execute instructions independently of the others.

  6. 6

    Why does doubling the number of cores not double the speed of every program?

    Model answer

    A program gains from extra cores only where the work divides into parts that can run at the same time, and many tasks have steps that must follow one after another.

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