Unit 1.1 - Computer Systems Flashcards
(75 cards)
What does CPU mean
Central processing unit
Why is the CPU important
Hold several million transistors and process hundreds of millions of instructions each second
What is CPU speed measured in
Hertz
Function of transistor
Store 0s and 1s
What are transistors located on
Thin slice of silicon
How many transistors fit on one silicon chip
Thousands
Who created the idea of a stored program
Von Neumann
List components of CPU
Controller
ALU
Registers
Internal memory
Controller function
To send and receive signals from all parts of the computer
ALU function
To process and manipulate data, preform simple calculations and comparisons on data
Registers function
Store data or control info temporarily
Internal memory function
Used for fast access temporary storage from registers
Example of register
Accumulator - used to store ALU calculations
What are the actions performed by the ALU
Decision making & solving equations
Buses function
They allow data to be transferred to different parts of the computer
Address bus function
To send a storage address of where data is to be stored or loaded from
Data bus function
To transfer data to different parts of The computer
Control bus function
To send control signals to different parts of the computer
Idea of a Stored program is referred to as
Von Neumann architecture
FDE cycle step 1
Fetch - fetches address required from memory and stores it in the current instruction register and points to the next instruction
FDE cycle step 2
Decode - the control unit authenticates the instruction in the current instruction register and further decoded to determine its function
FDE cycle step 3
Execute - executes decoded instructions
Cache memory definition
Very expensive Fast access type type of memory. Due to the cost, there is usually significantly less cache memory in computers than there is RAM.
The more cache memory…
…the better the performance
