AS / A Level Computer Science
A CS 15 Hardware and Virtual Machines
A CS 15.1 Processors, Parallel Processing and Virtual Machines
Candidates should be able to:
Show understanding of Reduced Instruction Set
Computers (RISC) and Complex Instruction Set
Computers (CISC) processors
Show understanding of the importance / use of
pipelining and registers in RISC processors
Show understanding of the four basic computer
architectures
Show understanding of the characteristics of
massively parallel computers
Show understanding of the concept of a virtual
machine
Notes and guidance
Differences between RISC and CISC
Understand interrupt handling on CISC and RISC
processors
SISD, SIMD, MISD, MIMD
Give examples of the role of virtual machines
Understand the benefits and limitations of virtual
machines