1.1.2 Types of Processor

Differences between RISC and CISC processors:

CISC

• Aims to complete task in as few lines of assembly as possible - instructions are complex
• Processor hardware and circuitry is more complicated so it can understand the complicated instructions
• Compiler does less work to translate the statements into assembly
• Could take more than one clock cycle to execute

RISC

• Uses simple instructions that will be executed within a single clock cycle
• More lines of code - less efficient
• Compiler does less work
• Extra RAM is needed to store assembly instructions
• Less complex hardware is needed (more room for general purpose registers)
• Pipelining is possible

GPUs and their uses:

GPU: a co-processor which has lots of independent processors working in parallel making it very efficient at tasks such as image processing, and machine learning.

• Renders graphics
• Simple operations on larger sets applying the same operation repeatedly
• Repetitive tasks

Multi-core and Parallel Systems:

Multi-core system: Multi-core CPUs have multiple independent cores that can complete instructions separately resulting in higher performance

• some programs cant use all cores
• performance can be enhanced by shared cache

Parallel systems: Process program instructions by dividing them between multiple processors (split a job into multiple tasks which are completed in any processor)

• Software may not be designed to use parallel systems
• Overall, in larger projects, multi-core systems perform better than parallel systems.