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Factors that affect the performance of a computer operation:
1. The cycle speed
This indicates the number of instructions that the processor can handle in a second. For
example, a Pentium 4 chip with a clock speed of 2 GHz can handle upto 2 trillion instructions
per second. The cycle of a computer is indicated in the system‘s properties as
displayed in the operating system environment (interface).
2. The processor?s word length
Word length refers to the number of bits that the computer can process at one time. A 32-bit
chip can process 32 bits or 4 bytes of data in a single machine cycle. The larger the word
length, the greater the speed of the execution of a cycle. Word length size is implied in the
name of the processor e.g. Pentium implies 32-bit processing; Itanium implies 64-bit
processing.
3. Data bus width
The data bus acts as a highway between the CPU, primary storage and other devices,
determining how much data can be moved at one time. The larger the data bus width, the
greater the system performance. Data bus width is measured in bits and it depends on the type
of processing chip e.g. the 8088 chip used in the original IBM personal computer, for example,
has a 16-bit word length but only an 8-bit data bus width.
4. RAM (Random Access Memory) size
Since all operands (objects being manipulated in an operation e.g. numbers) are loaded into
main memory prior to an operation being carried out, the larger the size of the RAM, the more
operands that can be accommodated and hence the greater the performance of large operations. Where the operands exceed the RAM size, the operands have to be swapped
(moved) into and out of memory as the operation is carried out. This results in time overheads
which means lower performance. Hence, a large main memory provides a greater capability for
high performance than a small main memory for complex/large operations. RAM size is
measured in bytes and it‘s indicated in the computer system unit. RAM size can also be
calculated by counting the number of RAM chips in the motherboard of the computer
gregorymasila answered the question on November 23, 2017 at 12:57
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