Factors Affecting the Performance of Computer Processors

There are so many factors that affect the performance of your processors, these factors will either slow down or increases your processor speed. When the speed is reduced the rate at which data and information processing will be negatively affected and this will result into time wasting. Below are ways that your computer performance would be affected

Math Co-Processor
The Co-processor is used to increase the processors number crunching speed but it does not however increases the speed of simple additions and subtraction. The Math Co-processor increases the speed of calculations involving floating decimal point operation i.e. Algebra and statistics. The negative effect could also be noticed if the Co processor is faulty and can’t process these functions

Clock speed
The frequency with which the processor execute instructions, the higher the clock speed (measured in MHz), the faster the processor. In aging Computers one would realized how slow they can be sometimes, this would result as the slow clock speed experienced by these Computers. If the clock is affected the speed also has to reduce and the overall performance of your machine will be either badly affected or greatly improved. New machines processed data and information much faster because they have brand new clock with high speed
 
Internal Cache
This is a storage area for frequently used data and instructions. The processor contains an internal cache controller that integrates the cache with the Central Processing Unit (C.P.U), the controller stores frequently accessed Random Access Memory (RAM) locations to provide faster execution of data and instructions and therefore a larger cache leads to the perception of a faster CPU.



The Bus
This refers to the system board underlying circuitry. A Bus is defined as an electronic pathway along which signals are sent from one part of the Computer to the other. The processor’s ability to communicate with the rest of the system’s components relies on the supporting circuitry

Below are factors to help increase the processor speed
•    Increase data bus width
•    Perfecting technique
•    Pipelining technique
•    Use of two alternative Arithmetic Logic Units (A.L.U)
•    Use of Floating Point Unit (FPU) the math coprocessor
•    Clock multiplying
•    Memory caching systems