Performance of the CPU

Clock speed:

• measured in hertz

• number of cycles per second

• modern processors operate at billion of cycles per second— gigahertz

Cache size:

• temporary storage of data and instructions being read to and written from

• located near the CPU

• stores copies of recent data and instructions

• much quicker to access than the RAM

• we want to avoid getting instructions and data from memory if we don’t need to as it cost time

Number of cores:

• a core is a complete copy of a CPU

• CPU with multiple cores have more power to run multiple programs at the same time

• CPU cores have to communicate with each other, which takes time

• many programs are not designed to make use of multiple cores