Computer Architecture

Computer Architecture
Outcome 3
John Lennon

1.
Over the years the microprocessor has developed in various areas. Each processor development has a different design, wiring and a different instruction set. The main developments which has improved the functionality of the microprocessor are:-

Bus width
The Address bus opens an address location, the width of the address bus determines how many memory locations can be accessed at any given time (how much memory you can address to where n = bus width) for example 32 pieces of information being simultaneously transferred, is the equivalent to 32bit bus width. The wider the bus width the more information can be transferred from CPU to memory at the same time. When looking at an Early Intel chip such as the 8080, which had an address bus width of 8bits, which means it could only access 1Meg of memory at a time, and then compare that to the P III, which has an address bus width of 36 bits and can access up to...