Lesson 4.7.3.7

4.7.3.7 Factors affecting processor performance Quiz: AQA Computer Science, Unit 7

20 questions

Written by Revision Ninja · Last reviewed 11 October 2026

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Lesson 4.7.3.7, Factors affecting processor performance: 20 multiple choice questions for the AQA Computer Science (7517), Unit 7: Fundamentals of computer organisation and architecture, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. Which factor allows a processor to work on several parts of a workload at the same time?

    • A wider data bus
    • A faster clock speed
    • Multiple cores
    • A larger cache memory

  2. Where is cache memory located to provide faster access than RAM?

    • In virtual memory
    • On the motherboard
    • In secondary storage
    • On the CPU

  3. What unit is used to measure processor clock speed?

    • Bits per second
    • Bytes
    • Cycles per instruction
    • Hertz

  4. What does the word length of a processor specify?

    • Cache block size
    • Clock speed frequency
    • Bus wire count
    • Bits processed simultaneously

  5. What is directly limited by the width of the address bus?

    • Clock rate limit
    • ALU calculation speed
    • Addressable memory locations
    • Data transfer speed

  6. What is directly determined by the width of a processor data bus?

    • Bits transferred simultaneously
    • Core processing speed
    • Clock frequency rate
    • Maximum memory size

  7. A 64-bit value must be moved over a 16-bit data bus. How many transfers are needed?

    • 16
    • 8
    • 4
    • 2

  8. What is the maximum directly addressable memory for a 24-bit address bus?

    • 8 MiB
    • 24 MiB
    • 24 MB
    • 16 MiB

  9. Which processor sub-component holds the memory address currently being read from or written to?

    • Memory address register
    • Memory data register
    • Program counter
    • Accumulator

  10. Why might doubling clock speed fail to double overall processing speed?

    • ALU size limits
    • Overpowered cache
    • RAM bottleneck
    • Address bus limit

  11. Which processor feature determines the bit-size of operations performed by the ALU?

    • Word length
    • Clock speed
    • Address bus width
    • Cache size

  12. What occurs when required data is not found in cache memory?

    • Cache hit
    • Cache miss
    • Interrupt request
    • Stack overflow

  13. Which hardware specification determines the maximum directly addressable memory capacity?

    • Data bus width
    • Cache size
    • Address bus width
    • Clock speed

  14. How many total clock cycles per second can eight 2 GHz cores complete?

    • 1.6 x 10^10
    • 1.6 x 10^9
    • 2.0 x 10^9
    • 8.0 x 10^9

  15. How does cache memory compare to RAM in terms of speed and capacity?

    • Faster and larger
    • Slower and larger
    • Faster and smaller
    • Slower and smaller

  16. Which component upgrade best reduces processor wait time for memory?

    • Faster clock speed
    • Larger cache
    • Wider address bus
    • More CPU cores

  17. A processor has a 64-bit word length. What is the maximum number of bits that a single ALU operation handles?

    • 32
    • 128
    • 8
    • 64

  18. How many address lines must be added to double a computer's addressable memory space?

    • 32 lines
    • 2 lines
    • 1 line
    • 8 lines

  19. Which processor feature gives the greatest performance improvement when running multiple independent programs simultaneously?

    • Higher clock speed
    • Wider address bus
    • Multiple cores
    • Larger word length

  20. What does the clock speed of a processor directly measure?

    • Cycles per second
    • Data bus capacity
    • Memory access speed
    • Instruction execution time

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