Computer Science 306: Computer Architecture Ch. 9
In a timing diagram, a _____ indicates an idle state.
1
When a RAID system is connected to a computer, how many drives does the operating system show?
1
In a USB, which pins are responsible for data transfer?
2 (white); 3 (green)
Technically speaking, what is the most accurate description of a peripheral device?
A device that is connected to a computer but is not part of the core computer architecture
What is a system bus?
A single computer bus for the data transfer between the CPU, the memory and the input/output devices.
A system needs to be improved, and after analysis, we realize that the part that could be improved constitutes 45% of the system and it would allow for an improvement of 45%. What is the overall performance improvement in this case?
About 16%
Into which main categories can storage devices be placed?
Magnetic, semi-conductor, optical
Which device listed below can be considered as an input only device?
Mouse
Which of the following saves data by using a laser?
Optical storage
What is a front-side bus?
Part of the system bus that connects the CPU to the main memory and the input/output devices.
Which of the following is a magnetic storage device?
Portable hard-drive
Which of the following is an advantage of RAID?
RAID improves the reliability of data storage and performance.
What improvement(s) in terms of data storage does RAID 0 provide?
Read/write performance
What does RAID stand for?
Redundant Array of Independent Disks
What improvement(s) in terms of data storage does RAID 1 provide?
Reliability and read performance
D1, D2, BSY, and SEL are most likely to be found in the _____ architecture.
SCSI
What is the first step in the I/O Reader Sequence?
The I/O device gets a signal from the processor.
Amdahl's law states that
The bigger or more important the part that can't be improved, the less is the overall performance improvement.
What does the term 'non-volatile' mean with regard to flash memory?
The memory will not lose information if power is removed.
What best describes the line-up and line-down status on a bus timing diagram? See snippet below: https://study.com/cimages/multimages/16/bus_q4.png
Flag Raised/Flag Lowered
Which of the following is true of flash memory in comparison to spinning magnetic hard drives?
Flash memory generally consumes less power.
Which of the following is a downside of purchasing flash memory for data storage instead of a spinning hard drive?
Flash memory is more expensive per gigabyte of data.
Which of the following is true of flash memory?
Flash memory is solid state.
In USB architecture, which layer is the software layer?
Function
Which of these storage devices can hold the most data?
Hard drive
Which of the following best describes how information is erased from flash memory?
Information is erased electrically in blocks.
What are the three general types of peripheral devices?
Input, output and storage
When a WRITE operation happens on the bus, what best describes the CPU's actions after the request and write flags are raised?
It waits until writing is done.
Consider the following snapshot from a bus timing diagram. When does the Request line raise the signal for operations? https://study.com/cimages/multimages/16/bus_q1.png
Just before t1
Which of the following peripherals is the most essential for full computer functionality?
Keyboard
When more than one component with different performance improvement factors are to be improved, Amdahl's law takes the following format: Smax= 1/(1 - p1 - p2-...) + (p1/s1 + p2/s2 +...)) For the system composed of the following parts: Component 1 constitutes 5% of the system and its performance can be doubled. Component 2 constitutes 20% of the system and its performance can be improved by 80%. Component 3 constitutes 45% of the system and its performance can be improved by 50%. The performance of the remaining of the system cannot be improved. We will call this part Component 4. What is the overall performance improvement if we work on improving all the parts of the system?
About 36%
A system is composed of two parts: component 1 that cannot be improved and component 2 that constitutes 60% of the system. How much must the performance of this component be improved to reach the 81% improvement of the system? (Smax = 1.81)
About 4 times
What types of information does the system bus carry?
Address, control and data information.
What are all the possible ways to connect a wireless-capable peripheral to a computer?
All of the answers are correct.
A(n) _____ indicates the time to make a single read/write operation.
Bus cycle
Which of these statements is NOT true?
Cache memory is typically not used in modern CPUs.
Which of the following is NOT a computer peripheral?
Central processing unit
Which I/O control method below can manage multiple device requests at once?
Channel
Which of the following uses a hard drive we can't see to store data using an Internet connection?
Cloud storage
A system is composed of 4 components: The performance of 5% of the system can be doubled. We will call this part component 1 The performance of 20% of the system can be improved by 80%. We will call this part component 2 The performance of 45% of the system can be improved by 50%. We will call this part component 3 The performance of the remaining of the system cannot be improved. We will call this part component 4 Using Amdahl's law, which component is most worthy to work on to get the maximum overall improvement?
Component 3
Which I/O control method has direct access to transferring information to and from memory on a computer?
DMA
In both Read and Write operations on the bus, what is the final action taken by the CPU?
Delete the address
In the SCSI architecture, the upper level contains which elements?
Disks, DVD-ROM drives
What does a computer bus do?
Transfers data between components of a computer system.
Complete the statement: For every _____ there must be an _____.
input, output
