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Although the CPU needs only a few parts to
do its job, it has been modified to increase the performance. The
enhancements are made in order to process data faster. One of the weaknesses of
the basic CPU was that it was not doing any processing during the time that it
fetched an instruction from the computer memory. To reduce this, a memory
storage area was created inside the CPU called Cache or L1 type Cache. The Cache is
very fast, and is used to store information that the CPU needed to access the
most. Level 2 cache was also created for the CPU. It was similar to
L1 Cache.
Now that the CPU has to wait much less
for the data to be processed, the speed at which the data can be processed had
to be enhanced. To do this, multiple ALUs (Arithmetic Logic Unit) were placed on the CPU, so that
many more calculation was done each clock cycle. In addition, the FPU
(Floating Point Unit) was added. The FPU is similar to the ALU, except it
acts as a sort of specialist. It could handle extremely large and extremely
small numbers much better than the FPU, allowing greater processing speeds.
Also, it can simultaneously process multiple graphics and sounds at a time.
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