Practice Control Unit Involvement (12.2.1) - Fetch Cycle - Computer Organisation and Architecture - Vol 1
Students

Academic Programs

AI-powered learning for grades 8-12, aligned with major curricula

Professional

Professional Courses

Industry-relevant training in Business, Technology, and Design

Games

Interactive Games

Fun games to boost memory, math, typing, and English skills

Control Unit Involvement

Practice - Control Unit Involvement

Enroll to start learning

You’ve not yet enrolled in this course. Please enroll for free to listen to audio lessons, classroom podcasts and take practice test.

Learning

Practice Questions

Test your understanding with targeted questions

Question 1 Easy

What does the program counter do?

💡 Hint: Think about where instructions come from.

Question 2 Easy

Which register temporarily holds data being fetched from memory?

💡 Hint: It's involved in the reading of instructions.

4 more questions available

Interactive Quizzes

Quick quizzes to reinforce your learning

Question 1

What does the program counter (PC) do?

Stores the instruction
Holds the address of the next instruction
Generates control signals

💡 Hint: Remember what the PC signifies in the instruction cycle.

Question 2

True or False: The control unit can execute instructions directly without assistance from other components.

True
False

💡 Hint: Think about its role in the fetch and execute cycles.

1 more question available

Challenge Problems

Push your limits with advanced challenges

Challenge 1 Hard

Describe how an interruption from an input/output operation could affect the fetch cycle timing. What adjustments might the control unit need to make?

💡 Hint: Think about what happens when a task takes longer than expected.

Challenge 2 Hard

If the instruction sequence in memory is unusually large, how might this impact the efficiency of the fetch cycle? Consider both hardware and software perspectives.

💡 Hint: Consider the balance between memory retrievals and processing speed.

Get performance evaluation

Reference links

Supplementary resources to enhance your learning experience.