Core Concepts in Computer Architecture and Assembly
CPU Fundamentals and Timing
Clock Cycles and Frequency
A clock that oscillates 1 million times per second (1 MHz) produces a clock cycle of 1 microsecond (1 μs), which equals 10-6 seconds per cycle.
Instruction Execution Pipeline
The steps for executing a machine instruction are:
- Fetch the instruction.
- Decode the instruction.
- Fetch the operand (if any).
- Execute the instruction.
- Store the result or output.
Cache Memory Operations
Cache memory is a small, fast memory used to temporarily store frequently accessed data or instructions to speed up CPU operations.
- A cache hit occurs when the CPU finds the required data in cache memory.
- A cache miss occurs when the data is not found and must be fetched from main memory.
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