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1.1.1 Structure and function of the processor

A-Level Computer Science

Learning Objectives - RAG Self-Assessment

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1. (a) The Arithmetic and Logic Unit; ALU, Control Unit and Registers (Program Counter; PC, Accumulator; ACC, Memory Address Register; MAR, Memory Data Register; MDR, Current Instruction Register; CIR). Buses: data, address and control: how this relates to assembly language programs.

2. (b) The Fetch-Decode-Execute Cycle; including its effects on registers.

3. (c) The factors affecting the performance of the CPU: clock speed, number of cores, cache.

4. (d) The use of pipelining in a processor to improve efficiency.

5. (e) Von Neumann, Harvard and contemporary processor architecture

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