OCR H446/01 Computer systems · 1.1.1

Structure and function of the processor

Revision notes for OCR A Level Computer Science (H446) 1.1.1 Structure and function of the processor.

Revision notes

• a.The ALU, Control Unit, registers (PC, ACC, MAR, MDR, CIR) and buses
• b.The Fetch-Decode-Execute cycle and its effects on registers
• c.Factors affecting CPU performance: clock speed, number of cores, cache
• d.The use of pipelining in a processor to improve efficiency
• e.Von Neumann, Harvard and contemporary processor architecture