The CPU
This is a good opportunity to remind students
about what they learned last lesson.
Go to the ‘teacher’ section of the topic that
you covered last lesson.
Choose from any of the starter activities
available in that section.
By the end of this lesson you will:
•Understand the role of the CPU
•Be able to name the main
components of a CPU
•Be able to describe the role of the
CPU components
The CPU is an electronic chip
called a microprocessor
It is located
on the
Motherboard
The purpose of the CPU is to
process data.
It is where all the sorting, searching,
calculating and decision making
takes place
The CPU:
•Fetches instructions from memory (RAM)
•It decodes those instructions
•It then executes (carries out) the
instructions.
The instructions are
provided by a computer
program
As well as processing data, the CPU also controls
the computer hardware, for example the:
•Hard disk
•Input/output devices
•DVD drive
•Sound system
•Graphics system
The main components of the CPU you
need to know about are:
•The Control Unit (CU)
•The Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU)
•The registers
•The cache
•The clock
•The data buses
The control unit performs three tasks:
•It controls the way data moves around the
CPU
•It controls and monitors the flow of data
between the CPU and other hardware
components
•It executes the instructions provided by the
program
The ALU handles the data processing inside
the CPU
•It performs standard arithmetic operations such
as addition, subtraction etc
•It deals with logic and comparisons such as ‘is
this value greater than that value?’
A register is a type of temporary memory
located inside the CPU.
It is faster to shift data to and from registers
rather than RAM so it speeds up processing
time.
There are many registers inside the CPU
The cache is another type of temporary memory.
It is faster to access than RAM, but slower to access
than the registers
There can be both an internal cache (inside the CPU)
and an external cache (outside the CPU)
The clock is a tiny quartz crystal inside the CPU
which ticks at a steady speed
Each time the clock ticks the CPU can process
one instruction
A typical clock has a speed of around 3GHz
which means the CPU can carry out three
thousand million instructions per second!
A bus is a set of wires or tracks laid down on a
printed circuit board.
Their role is to carry data around the system.
The data bus carries data around the system
The address bus carries information on the
location of the data
The control bus handles commands to control
devices e.g. hard disk, monitor etc
1. Go to the [Link] website
2. Go to the OCR 9-1 GCSE section
3. Go to the ‘purpose and components of
the CPU’ section
4. Choose ‘student’
5. Choose ‘lesson’
Work your way through the tasks on the
page.
Go to the ‘teacher’ section on Teach-
ICT for this topic:
Choose from any of the plenary
activities available in that section.
At the end of this lesson you should
now:
•Understand the role of the CPU
•Be able to name the main
components of a CPU
•Be able to describe the role of the
CPU components
