TEACHER PORTAL // ANSWER KEY & FACILITATION GUIDE

SILICON BLUEPRINT KEY

Answers, Trace Logic, and Misconception Diagnostics

REV: 2026.06.01

CONFIDENTIAL_

Instructional Notes: "How a CPU Works" Video

Use this key alongside the student study guide. Before watching, clarify that the CPU operates on electrical pulses that act as high/low switches (binary). Emphasize that the CPU has no actual "intelligence"—it only moves, stores, and performs math on integers.

1. Anatomy Diagnostics & Teacher Cheat Sheet

Control Unit (CU)

What to watch for: Students often confuse the CU with the entire CPU. Ensure they understand the CU specifically handles routing data signals rather than actual calculations.

Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU)

What to watch for: Ensure students know that logical operations (like checking if A > B) are solved in the ALU, not just addition and subtraction.

Registers (e.g., Register A)

What to watch for: Highlight that Registers are located on the silicon die of the CPU itself, giving them near-zero transmission latency compared to external system RAM.

Random Access Memory (RAM)

What to watch for: Students must understand that RAM stores both the software instructions (opcodes) and raw variables (numbers) in the same grid.

2. The F-D-E Cycle: Key Milestones

Verify that students can explain the cycle in order. If they mix up the steps, have them associate physical locations with each phase:

FETCH Diagnostic

The Program Counter (PC) acts as a finger pointing to a page. It only holds a memory location number, which is sent across the Address Bus to pull back instructions.

DECODE Diagnostic

The Instruction Decoder splits binary codes like 0001 1110 into the action command (0001 = LOAD) and address slot (1110 = Address 14).

EXECUTE Diagnostic

The action itself is processed. Make sure students notice that the PC automatically advances (+1) at the end of execution to queue up the next linear address space automatically.

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SYSTEM INSTRUCTION DECK // KEY SOLUTIONS

ACTIVE WORKSPACE VERIFICATIONS

3. Basic Assembly Command Deck - Technical Reference

Verify students have correctly written the mnemonics. The four instruction formats behave identically to standard LMC (Little Man Computer) or early 8-bit assembly architectures:

LD (Load Register A): Essential for getting the baseline value. Students cannot add or manipulate numbers without first loading one of them into a CPU register.
ADD (Add to Register A): Emphasize that ADD 15 does not add the number 15. It adds the number found inside Address slot 15 to whatever is already sitting inside Register A.
ST (Store Register A): Write operations take the temporary Register A value and save it permanently (or until overwrite) back out to the main RAM banks.

4. Active Practice Trace Solutions (Complete Program Walkthrough)

Here is the step-by-step state transition of the active program trace. Ensure student guides match these values:

Step 1 Key LD 14

Copies value 5 from RAM slot 14.

Step 2 Key ADD 15

ALU adds value 8 (from RAM 15) to current 5.

Step 3 Key ST 14

Saves value 13 back to RAM slot 14.

RAM Slot 14 = 13

5. Exemplar Answer: Registers vs. RAM (Critical Thinking)

Question Prompt:

Why does a computer architecture require both Registers (inside CPU) and RAM (outside CPU) if they both store data? Why can't we use only RAM?

EXEMPLAR CRITICAL RESPONSE SPECIFICATION: "We cannot use only RAM because of latency and speed. RAM is located externally on the motherboard, requiring data signals to travel across a physical system bus, which takes hundreds of clock cycles. CPU Registers are located physically on the CPU silicon chip, allowing them to be read/written in a single clock cycle. However, Registers are extremely expensive and space-consuming, so we only have a few of them, using RAM for bulk storage."

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Silicon Blueprint Answer Key

Silicon Blueprint Answer Key

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