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Computer Science IGCSEPDF 25
142 pagesrevision 46930
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CPU has 3 common characteristics
Clock Seed
Cache size
Number of cores
Thesehave a significant impact on CPU’s performance
specified by the decoded instruction.
Examples of execute stage are:
■ Carrying out arithmetic or logical calculations
■ Storing a result or a piece of data back into main
memory
■ Accessing a different memory location to retrieve
required data
Clock speed is expressed in units called Hertz (Hz).
It indicates how many fetch-decode-execute cycles the
CPU can perform in one second.
A higher clock speed allows more instructions to be
fetched and executed every second.
Today’s computers typically operate at speeds
measured in Gigahertz (GHz), which represents
billions of cycles per second.
For example, a 2.5GHz processor can handle as many
as 2.5 billion instructions each second.
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Characteristics of CPU
Clock Speed