Chapter TG.1, Problem 1DQ

Program Plan Intro

Microprocessor:

• It is a type of computer processor that contains all the functions of computer’s central Processing unit.
• It is designed with millions of microscopic transistors that are embedded inside the circuit of a silicon wafer or chips.

Speed of the microprocessor:

• The speed of the microprocessor is determined based on the number of instruction that get processed in a second.
• It is commonly measured by the number machine instruction gets cycled per second (MIPS).
• The speed of the microprocessor generally depends on the following factors and they are:
  • Number of transistors
  • Clock speed
  • Cache memory
  • Bandwidth

Explanation of Solution

Factors that affect the speed of the microprocessor are:

The below are the factors that affect the speed of the microprocessor and they are:

• The size of on-chip cache present: Cache is used to solve discrepancy in speed between the main memory and microprocessor.
• Data bus bandwidth: It determines on how many instructions can be handled at the main memory at a particular time. Wider the bandwidth the maximum number of instructions could be handled.
• Size of the word: It is the number of bits the microprocessor could handle at a particular time. Increase in word size improves the performance.
• Optimization in locality of reference: Ensuring right data got from the cache at the required time could improve the performance.
• Number of cores: The maximum the number of core can improve the speed and performance.
• Technique to process the data: Processing data in a parallel way can improve the performance.