Specific knowledge required for AS and A Level:
- Candidates need to have an understanding of the purpose and function of the core components of a processor.
- Candidates need to understand the role and components of the ALU.
- Candidates need to understand the purpose and function or registers within the processor, including the PC, accumulator, MAR, MDR and CIR.
- Candidates need to understand the purpose, function and role of the data, address and control buses in the processor.
- Candidates need to understand how assembly language makes use of registers, and how data and addressed are transferred between registers.
- Candidates need to understand the purpose and stages within the FDE cycle.
- Candidates need to understand how and when the registers are used within this cycle, and how and where data and addresses are transmitted to/from in each part of this cycle.
- Candidates need to understand how the performance of the CPU can be affected by many factors.
- Candidates need to understand how and why the performance is affected by the clock speed, the number of cores and the size and speed of the cache.
- Candidates need to have an understanding of the Von Neumann and Harvard architectures. They should be aware of the different approaches the architectures take to storing instructions and data in memory and the benefits of each approach.
- Candidates will not be asked about specific aspects of “contemporary processor architecture” unless explicitly named in the specification. They may, however, be asked to show an awareness of how contemporary processors differ from a pure Von Neumann architecture in more open questions.
Static link to the videos for this topic:
We update our flipped classroom videos from time-to-time to keep them relevant. This can be troublesome if you put links to the videos on your VLE because the hyperlink address will change with each update. The link below will take you to a static playlist for all the videos in this section that you can safely put on your VLE, ensuring you always have a path to the latest videos, and no broken links.
