We are building a Gaming Computer and have to compare each component and explain what each one does. I will be posting my CPU explanation below and would appreciate it if someone could read through and give advice for facts, grammar or things to add in. I know it may be a bit too much for the explanation for this assignment but I like to go in detail and explain what each part actually does.
A Central Processing Unit (CPU’s) is considered to be the brain of the computer and is located on silicon chips. Other names for this particular unit include; processor, microprocessor or Integrated Circuit (IC). They are called the brain of the computer because they have circuitry which completes instructions in the memory to perform calculations. There are 4 main parts of a CPU, they are; the Control Unit (CU), the ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit), the I/O (Input/Output) Unit and the cache. There also may be a built-in memory controller inside the CPU (e.g. Intel i5 and i7) which controls the data flow between the processor and the RAM. The control unit controls when and how the instructions are executed. The ALU actually performs arithmetic and logic operations so the control unit can use these to complete an instruction. There may be multiple ALU’s and they also typically only work on integers. Floating point numbers are usually worked on by an FPU (Floating Point Unit), a minor unit in the CPU but it is a vital part to the processing unit. The Input/Output Unit consists of many registers to control the flow of information to the whole computer. Finally, the cache is the CPU’s internal memory and is used when the computer thinks that some information will be handy and be used again. Cache is made of SRAM (Static RAM), hence why it is the fastest memory in the whole computer system. A consequence of this speed is the fact that SRAM is very expensive which is why it is only used in the CPU. There are 4 levels of cache; level 1 (L1), level 2 (L2), level 3 (L3) and level 4 (L4). If an instruction requiring memory cannot find the information that it is looking for in L1 cache it moves to the next level. If it gets to L4 cache (assuming that there is even L4 in the CPU) and the CPU cannot find what it is looking for it will look in the main memory, also known as SDRAM (Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory). If the instructions that the computer is looking for isn’t in any of these spaces it will go to the secondary memory (Hard Disk Drives or Solid State Drives). Operations of the processor are synchronized by the system clock, located somewhere on the motherboard. This specifies how many clock cycles should be performing per second. This is generally measured in gigahertz (or GHz) and can be overclocked to be faster. Overclocking is a concept which speeds up the processors clock speed to improve performance and the instructions per second. This increases the throughput of the CPU but is hard to implement properly due to heat limitations. ‘Superclocked’ is also another common term which refers to the fact that the manufacturer has already overclocked it so it performs at a quicker speed. CPU throttling is a technique by which the processor can dynamically adjust its frequency in order to reduce heat output or reduce power consumption. This is similar to Intel’s Turbo Boost technology (or AMD’s Turbo Core technology) which dynamically changes the frequency in order to speed up the processor. Microprocessors function by the use of a group of Instruction Sets. Instruction Sets tell the CPU what it can and cannot do and includes a list of features in which all have different types of ‘commands’ and are programmed in an assembly language. These sets determine the processors limits and all have different uses such as the SSE set, which increases the knowledge of floating point numbers to the processor. CPU’s are divided into sections called ‘’Cores” and these allow the processor to multithread instructions to allow faster processing speed. Cores can also be split up into different ‘threads’ which allows the Operating System to ‘see’ all of the threads as extra cores. This boosts performance dramatically as it promotes multithreading by letting multiple instructions and operations happen all at once. Another main feature of a modern processor is pipelining and it is a very important feature and technology included in the microprocessor as it allows instructions to be overlapped in execution thus the CPU can complete instructions at a much faster speed. A Branch Predictor can be used to enhance the flow of the pipelining stages by predicting a branch of control statements. Multithreading, pipelining and parallelism is considered to be of a superscalar design which means that more than one instruction can be done per clock.
Initially three CPU’s were examined as the best for use in a gaming computer are; Intel Core i5 6600K, Intel Core i7 5820K, and Intel Core i7 6700k. All of these CPU’s are from the x86_64 architecture which means that the data path width can transfer information up to 64 bits each clock cycle. The x86 and x86_64 architecture uses an instruction set called CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) and defines how the simple or complex the instructions are. The opposite set of this stand is RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) which is used in the ARM (Advanced RISC Machines), PPC (PowerPC or Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC - Performance Computing) and MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages) architectures. CISC contains many complex instructions which means it takes the CPU longer to decode them. But this is where CISC gets interesting and actually breaks apart the instructions to make it like RISC instructions to increase the speed that the processor can execute the instructions. These sub operations are called micro-ops.
A Central Processing Unit (CPU’s) is considered to be the brain of the computer and is located on silicon chips. Other names for this particular unit include; processor, microprocessor or Integrated Circuit (IC). They are called the brain of the computer because they have circuitry which completes instructions in the memory to perform calculations. There are 4 main parts of a CPU, they are; the Control Unit (CU), the ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit), the I/O (Input/Output) Unit and the cache. There also may be a built-in memory controller inside the CPU (e.g. Intel i5 and i7) which controls the data flow between the processor and the RAM. The control unit controls when and how the instructions are executed. The ALU actually performs arithmetic and logic operations so the control unit can use these to complete an instruction. There may be multiple ALU’s and they also typically only work on integers. Floating point numbers are usually worked on by an FPU (Floating Point Unit), a minor unit in the CPU but it is a vital part to the processing unit. The Input/Output Unit consists of many registers to control the flow of information to the whole computer. Finally, the cache is the CPU’s internal memory and is used when the computer thinks that some information will be handy and be used again. Cache is made of SRAM (Static RAM), hence why it is the fastest memory in the whole computer system. A consequence of this speed is the fact that SRAM is very expensive which is why it is only used in the CPU. There are 4 levels of cache; level 1 (L1), level 2 (L2), level 3 (L3) and level 4 (L4). If an instruction requiring memory cannot find the information that it is looking for in L1 cache it moves to the next level. If it gets to L4 cache (assuming that there is even L4 in the CPU) and the CPU cannot find what it is looking for it will look in the main memory, also known as SDRAM (Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory). If the instructions that the computer is looking for isn’t in any of these spaces it will go to the secondary memory (Hard Disk Drives or Solid State Drives). Operations of the processor are synchronized by the system clock, located somewhere on the motherboard. This specifies how many clock cycles should be performing per second. This is generally measured in gigahertz (or GHz) and can be overclocked to be faster. Overclocking is a concept which speeds up the processors clock speed to improve performance and the instructions per second. This increases the throughput of the CPU but is hard to implement properly due to heat limitations. ‘Superclocked’ is also another common term which refers to the fact that the manufacturer has already overclocked it so it performs at a quicker speed. CPU throttling is a technique by which the processor can dynamically adjust its frequency in order to reduce heat output or reduce power consumption. This is similar to Intel’s Turbo Boost technology (or AMD’s Turbo Core technology) which dynamically changes the frequency in order to speed up the processor. Microprocessors function by the use of a group of Instruction Sets. Instruction Sets tell the CPU what it can and cannot do and includes a list of features in which all have different types of ‘commands’ and are programmed in an assembly language. These sets determine the processors limits and all have different uses such as the SSE set, which increases the knowledge of floating point numbers to the processor. CPU’s are divided into sections called ‘’Cores” and these allow the processor to multithread instructions to allow faster processing speed. Cores can also be split up into different ‘threads’ which allows the Operating System to ‘see’ all of the threads as extra cores. This boosts performance dramatically as it promotes multithreading by letting multiple instructions and operations happen all at once. Another main feature of a modern processor is pipelining and it is a very important feature and technology included in the microprocessor as it allows instructions to be overlapped in execution thus the CPU can complete instructions at a much faster speed. A Branch Predictor can be used to enhance the flow of the pipelining stages by predicting a branch of control statements. Multithreading, pipelining and parallelism is considered to be of a superscalar design which means that more than one instruction can be done per clock.
Initially three CPU’s were examined as the best for use in a gaming computer are; Intel Core i5 6600K, Intel Core i7 5820K, and Intel Core i7 6700k. All of these CPU’s are from the x86_64 architecture which means that the data path width can transfer information up to 64 bits each clock cycle. The x86 and x86_64 architecture uses an instruction set called CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) and defines how the simple or complex the instructions are. The opposite set of this stand is RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) which is used in the ARM (Advanced RISC Machines), PPC (PowerPC or Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC - Performance Computing) and MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages) architectures. CISC contains many complex instructions which means it takes the CPU longer to decode them. But this is where CISC gets interesting and actually breaks apart the instructions to make it like RISC instructions to increase the speed that the processor can execute the instructions. These sub operations are called micro-ops.