Mr. Clarkson Talks About... The CPU (for GCSE Computing)
Channel: Mark Clarkson
Date: 2012-04-26

Me talking about the CPU, in order to meet the OCR GCSE Computing syllabus.

These videos are unscripted and unrehearsed (you can probably tell). If you hear anything drastically wrong, misleading or incorrect then please get in touch.

You can find more stuff (including ICT and Computing resources) at mwclarkson.co.uk, mukoku.vl3.co.uk and @mwclarkson.

Two minor errors in this video - neither one is a problem if you're revising for GCSE Computing, but they are either wrong or at least misleading:

1. I point to the shiny plate on top of the CPU and call it a heatsink. It isn't. The heatsink is a bit like a radiator, usually made out of aluminium and sits on top of that plate to draw the heat away. I know that perfectly well and why I said what I said I don't know, but I'm not re-filming an entire 15 minute video to correct a mistake that minor.

2. (This is waaay beyond the GCSE syllabus) Each core in a multi-core processor has its own fetch-execute cycle, it's not the case that there is one fetch-execute cycle that feeds that instruction into the first available core (which my drawing implies). If you're a serious tech nerd then that's worth knowing, but for GCSE just remember that "more cores means more instructions can be executed at the same time".