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3 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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The Purpose of the CPU
The is often described as the 'brain of the computer'. |
The purpose of the CPU is to process data. It is where all the searching, sorting, calculating and decision making takes place in the computer.
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What is Clock Speed
Computers can only do one thing at a time. It may appear that many things are happening simultaneously, for example you may be listening to music while writing an essay and also downloading some software in the background. |
The CPU clock speed is measured in cycles per second. 1 cycle per second is also known as 1 Hertz
A computer running at 1GHz can carry out a thousand million instructions per second. |
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Number of Cores
Now imagine that the clock cannot be sped up any more for technical reasons. How would you improve performance? |
A sensible way forward is to use two CPUs at the same time. The job in hand is shared between the two CPUs.
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