Glossary of Terms

CPU Performance Factors

Keyword Definition
Bus Speed The speed at which data is transferred between the CPU and other components.
Cache Latency The time delay between the stored data request and its delivery.
Cache Memory A small and fast memory that stores frequently used data.
Clock Speed The number of cycles a CPU can execute per second.
Hyper-Threading A technology that allows a CPU to handle multiple threads per core.
Instruction Pipelining A technique used by CPUs to overlap the execution of multiple instructions, improving overall throughput and performance.
Instruction Set The set of all the instructions a CPU can execute.
Number Of Cores The number of independent processing units within a CPU.
Pipeline Length The number of stages in a CPU's instruction pipeline.
Power Consumption The amount of electrical power consumed by a CPU under normal operation.
Thermal Design Power The maximum amount of heat that a CPU generates under normal operation.
Thermal Design Power (TDP) The maximum amount of power a CPU is designed to dissipate while under typical workload conditions.
Thread Count The number of simultaneous execution paths a CPU can handle. A higher number of threads can improve multitasking performance.