ITPEC IP April 2025 Question 13

A 64-bit CPU can process longer data at once than a 32-bit CPU — the bit count is the width of data the CPU handles in one operation.

The "32-bit" or "64-bit" of a CPU is the size of its registers and of the data it processes in one instruction. A 64-bit CPU adds or moves 64-bit values in one step, where a 32-bit CPU would need two steps or cannot hold the value at all, and it can address far more memory.

Answer (a)

Why not others:

• •(b) — the reverse: a larger cache holds more of the data in use, so the CPU waits less often for slow main memory and runs faster
• •(c) — the reverse: with the same structure, each clock cycle does the same work, so a lower clock frequency means fewer cycles per second and slower processing
• •(d) — the reverse: a quad-core CPU has four cores and can run four processes at the same moment, a dual-core only two

Key rule: CPU performance rises with data width (bits), clock frequency, cache size and number of cores, each other factor being equal.

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