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Factors Affecting Processing Speed

The key factors that affect a CPU's processing speed include: 1) The size of the CPU's registers, with larger registers allowing it to process more data at once. Larger register sizes (e.g. 64-bit) allow faster processing. 2) The amount of RAM, as more RAM allows larger programs and data files to be used without slowing the CPU down by accessing storage. 3) The width of the data bus, which determines how many bits can be transferred between the CPU and other components at once, affecting transmission speed.

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Haji Ashfaq Khan Yousafzai
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4K views2 pages

Factors Affecting Processing Speed

The key factors that affect a CPU's processing speed include: 1) The size of the CPU's registers, with larger registers allowing it to process more data at once. Larger register sizes (e.g. 64-bit) allow faster processing. 2) The amount of RAM, as more RAM allows larger programs and data files to be used without slowing the CPU down by accessing storage. 3) The width of the data bus, which determines how many bits can be transferred between the CPU and other components at once, affecting transmission speed.

Uploaded by

Haji Ashfaq Khan Yousafzai
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Factors affecting processing speed

Introduction

The circuitry design of a CPU determines its basic speed, but several additional factors can
make chips already designed for speed work even faster. For example CPU’s registers, the
memory, the cache memory, data bus, and math coprocessor affect a computer’s speed.

How registers affect speed


The size of the registers is sometimes called the word size which indicates the amount of
data with which the computer can work at any given time. The bigger the word size, the more
quickly the computer can process a set of data. “32 – bit processors,” or ”64 – bit processors,” or
even “64 – bit computers.” are some examples of terminology which refers to the size of the
register in the processor.

Memory and computing power


The amount of RAM in a computer can have a profound effect on the computer’s power. It
means more RAM in computer can use bigger, more powerful programs, and those programs can
access bigger data files. And more RAM also can make the computer run faster. It comes from
the CPU can keep more of the active program and data in memory, rather than in storage.

The bus
The bus refers to the paths between the components of a computer. The data bus and the
address bus are two main buses in a computer which are located on the motherboard.
• The data bus
It is an electrical path that connects the CPU, memory, and the other hardware devices on
the motherboard. Indeed, the bus is a group of parallel wires. Besides, the number of wires in the
bus affects the speed at which data can travel between hardware components. Each wire can
transfer one bit at a time. If it is eight – wire bus, it can move eight bits at a time or a full byte.
Thus, the width of the data bus determines how many bits at a time can be transmitted between
the CPU and other devices.
• The address bus
The second bus that is found in every microcomputer is the address bus. It is a set of wires
similar to the data bus that connects the CPU and RAM and carries the memory addresses. The
reason of the address bus is important is that the number of wires in it determines the maximum
number of memory addresses. For instance, if the address bus could carry only eight bits at a
time, the CPU could address only 256 bytes of RAM (28 bytes).

Cache Memory
Cache memory is similar to RAM, except that it is extremely fast compared to normal
memory, and it is used in a different way. It helps to reduce the time – consuming operation of
CPU which is moving data back and forth to RAM. It speeds up processing by storing frequently
used data or instructions in its high – speed memory. Whenever the CPU requests information
from RAM, the cache controller intercepts the request and searches its own memory for the
requested information. If the information is not here, the CPU retrieves the required data from
the RAM memory and also sends a copy back to the cache. The next time the CPU needs the
same information, the cache finds that information, and quickly sends it to the CPU, leaving
RAM out of the loop.

Passing math operations to the math coprocessor


A math coprocessor is a chip that is specially designed to handle complicated
mathematical operations. Newer CPUs have math coprocessors built in. Math coprocessors
support the extreme number of calculations involved in generating computer graphics and video
imaging. It holds to be generalist.

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