Key Points#

So now you know the basics of CPU architecture at a very high level. This level of understanding is designed to help you understand terminology and how it applies to the real world. You don't have to be a maths wizard to understand what a CPU is (but it can help) because all it does is "crunch" numbers for you. Modern CPUs can do this in parallel due to having multiple cores. And they can do this billions of times per second as measured by the clock speed.

Here are the key points to take away from this section:

CPU Architecture

The architecture of a CPU determines the instruction set that it uses to run applications. The two primary architectures are x86 and arm. Software is compiled for a particular architecture.

32-bit vs 64-bit

A CPU is generally 32-bit or 64-bit. 64-bit offers higher memory access speeds because it can access more RAM during a single cycle

Clock Speed

CPUs operate at a "clock speed", which is the number of cycles it can perform in a given second. During a cycle, CPUs process instructions

CPU Cores

Most modern CPUs have multiple cores inside of them. Each core can execute instructions independently of the other cores. More cores means more work can be done in parallel

Now use this understanding to complete the self-assessment.