Computer ScienceCode 9618
Central Processing Unit (CPU) Architecture
What this topic asks you to be able to do
- Show a grasp of the fundamental Von Neumann model of a computer system, along with the stored program concept
- Show an understanding of what registers are for and what they do, including how general purpose registers differ from special purpose ones
- Show an understanding of the functions of the Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU), Control Unit (CU), system clock and Immediate Access Store (IAS)
- Show an understanding of how the address bus, data bus and control bus carry data between the parts of a computer system
- Show a grasp of what drives computer system performance, including: processor type and number of cores, bus width, clock speed and cache memory
- Understand how the different ports allow peripheral devices to be connected, including connection to: Universal Serial Bus (USB), High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), Video Graphics Array (VGA)
- Describe the successive stages making up the Fetch-Execute (F-E) cycle
- Describe ‘register transfer’ notation and use it to set out the F-E cycle
- Show a grasp of why interrupts exist, including: what can trigger them, where they are applied, the part played by an Interrupt Service handling Routine (ISR), at what point in the fetch-execute cycle they are picked up, and how they are dealt with