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What is a computer system?
a group of hardware and software collaborating to make an appliance that fulfils a specific task, or multiple tasks through input and outputÂ
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What two groups can all computers be classified into?
General Purpose System
Embedded System
What is a General Purpose System?
They can complete multiple different purposes by making use of software applications
What are some examples of General Purpose Systems?
Phones, laptops and computers
What is an Embedded System?
A computer that completes one specific task within a larger system
Give three examples of an Embedded System
Dishwasher
Washing machine
Oven
What is Firmware?
Hardware and software that the Embedded Systems need in order to carry out their specific function
What happens each time the clock ticks?
One Fetch Decode Execute cycle (one instruction is processed per tick)
What are clock speeds measured in?
Hertz
How fast are most clock speeds?
3 GigaHertz (~3 billion instructions processed per second)
How does clock speed correlate to CPU speed?
The higher the clock speed, the faster the CPU can run
How is the negative of having the clock run very fast?
The faster the clock speed, the more heat is generated. If the CPU gets too hot, it can get damaged
What is a core?
A complete processing unit within a CPU
What components of a CPU do cores also have?
ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit), Control Unit (CU), and registers
What is âmultitaskingâ?
Having extra cores to allow additional tasks to be carried out simultaneously, and this means that the processing time will speed upÂ
What does the âfetchâ in the FDE cycle mean?
Fetch an instruction from main memory
What does the âdecode' in the FDE cycle mean?
Decode the instruction from main memory
What does the âexecuteâ in the FDE cycle mean?
Carry out the instruction
What is the FDE cycle?
It describes the basic operation that all modern computer systems use
What is the CPU?
Central Processing Unit - where all the data is processed and where the FDE cycle is carried out.
What are the main components of the CPU?
Arithmetic Logic Unit
Control Unit
Cache
Registers
What are registers?
High speed devices used by the CPU to store small amounts of data used for certain processes
What do registers mainly process?
The addresses of the next instruction to be executed and the results of calculations
What are the five types of registers?
Program counter
Memory Address Register
Memory Data Register
Current Instruction Register
Accumulator
What does the program counter do?
It holds the RAM address of the next instruction to be fetched from main memory
What does Memory Address Register do?
Holds the memory address where instructions will be fetched from or data fetched from/stored to
What does the Memory Data Register do?
Holds the current data that has been fetched from memory OR is about to be stored in memory
What does the Current Instruction Register do?
It holds the instruction that is currently being processed - the instruction that is about to get executed
What does the Accumulator do?
It stores the result of the current calculation from ALU, stores input into ALU
What is the purpose of the Control Unit?
To control and monitor the flow of data between the hardware components and the CPU. It also executes the instructions provided by the program
What is the purpose of the Arithmetic Logic Unit?
It handles all of the data processing within the CPU. It performs standard arithmetic (fancy that) operations like subtraction, addition, multiplication and division and also deals with logical comparisons such as âis this value greater than this value?â
What is cache?
High speed volatile memory that is built into the processor
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