CPU Performance
Clock Speed
The first characteristic that determines CPU performance, is the clock speed. This is the number of instructions a single CPU core can carry out in 1 second, and is measured in Hz. For example, one of the CPU cores in the iPhone 14 operates at 3.23 GHz, meaning it can carry out 3.23 billion instructions per second.
Number of Cores
The second characteristic that determines CPU performance, is the number of cores. CPU cores are the processors within a CPU that each carry out instructions independently. The more cores, the more instructions it can carry out at once- although software needs to be designed to use multicore processing, and some tasks just can’t be parallelized as they may depend on one another, so it’s not as simple as doubling the cores doubles the speed.
CPU Size
The final characteristic is cache size, which we covered in detail in the previous lecture.
Summary
You can assume in general that CPUs with higher clock speeds, more cores or larger caches will have better performance.