quiz 5-7
62. A(n) ____ accepts a continuous electrical signal representing sound (such as microphone input), samples it at regular intervals, and outputs a stream of bits representing the samples.
. analog-to-digital converter (ADC)
58. PDF417 bar codes can hold around ____ of data.
1 KB
How many bytes are there per frame?
1 million bytes per frame.
What is the typical ratio of storage device size to cache size?
1,000:1 to 10,000:1.
What are the cache performance principles?
1. Cache access is faster than accessing the underlying storage device. 2. Predictive caching for reading. 3. Delayed writing to the storage device.
How many frames per second are being transferred?
10 frames per second.
How many transfers are required with a 1 byte buffer?
10 million transfers.
How many transfers are required with a 1 MB buffer?
10 transfers.
What is the ideal hit ratio for a cache controller?
100%.
70. Up to ____ channels of MIDI data can be sent over the same serial transmission line
16
How does the size of a buffer compare to a cache?
A cache is usually much larger than a buffer.
What is a font?
A collection of characters of similar style and appearance.
What is an I/O port?
A communication pathway between the CPU and a peripheral device
What is buffer overflow?
A condition where all storage locations in the buffer have data and the receiving device has not yet processed the data, causing new data to either be lost or overwrite other data in the buffer.
What is a monochrome display?
A display that can only show one of two colors, requiring only 1 bit per pixel.
What is a plasma display?
A display that combines elements of CRT and LCD technology.
What is a liquid crystal display (LCD)?
A display that contains a matrix of liquid crystals sandwiched between two polarizing filter panels.
What is a passive matrix display?
A display that shares transistors among rows and columns of pixels.
What is a cache?
A fast storage area used to improve read/write accesses to a slower storage device.
What is a cache?
A fast storage area used to improve the performance of read/write accesses to a slower storage device
What are input pads?
A general class of input devices such as digitized tablets and tablet PCs.
What is OpenGL?
A graphics API maintained by Khronos Group.
What is a rack group?
A group of 16 racks that are directly connected
What is the most important impact of a cache controller on performance?
Accuracy in guessing what data is most likely to be needed next.
What is the purpose of OLED?
Achieving high-quality color display with organic compounds.
What are the subsets of the system bus?
Address bus, data bus, control bus, power bus.
When does the CPU check the interrupt register?
After every execute cycle
What do specialized rack groups manage?
All secondary storage access
What is a multi-CPU architecture?
An architecture that employs multiple microprocessors on a single motherboard.
What is a sound card?
An expansion card that includes ADC, DAC, amplifier, and connectors.
What is a keyboard controller?
An integrated microprocessor used to generate bitstream outputs.
50. A modern large format printer is a _____ printer that can print on wider-than normal rolls of paper.
inkjet
87. Digitizing tablets and tablet PCs are examples of ____________________, a general class of input devices.
input pads
51. A(n) ____ operates with an electrical charge and the attraction of ink to this charge.
laser printer
45. A ____ contains a matrix of liquid crystals sandwiched between two polarizing filter panels that block all light except light approaching from a specific angle.
liquid crystal display
55. ____ sensors capture input from special-purpose symbols placed on paper or the flat surfaces of 3D objects.
mark and pattern
89. A(n) ____________________ scans for light or dark marks at specific locations on a page.
mark sensor
59. A(n) ____ generates bitmap representations of printed images.
optical scanner
A(n) ____ is simply a table of colors.
palette
81. A(n) ____________________ matrix display shares transistors among rows and columns of pixels.
passive
66. Human speech consists of a series of sounds called ____, roughly corresponding to the sounds of each letter of the alphabet.
phonemes
74. The ____________________ colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow.
subtractive
29. Phonemes sound similar when voiced repetitively by the same person.
truw
What is an ADC?
Analog-to-digital converter.
What is a peer-to-peer bus?
Any device can temporarily become a bus master.
What is the relationship between clock rate and bus length?
As length decreases, clock rate increases assuming all other factors are equal
How is cycle time computed?
As the reciprocal of the bus clock rate
What are examples of lossy compression?
Audio and still/motion video
56. A(n) ____ detects specific patterns of bars or boxes.
Bar code scanner
Why must the system bus be relatively long?
Because it connects all devices in the system
Why is multi-CPU architecture less common in workstations?
Because microprocessor core counts are increasing.
What can a grayscale display show?
Black, white, and shades of gray.
What is parallel processing?
Breaking large problems up into smaller pieces, allocating problem pieces to multiple compute nodes, and reassembling piece-wise solutions
What are some ways to achieve performance improvements?
Buffers and caching
What is a master-slave bus?
Bus master controls all bus transfers and all other devices are bus slaves.
What does a device controller implement?
Bus protocol, translation between bus and device protocols, and translation between logical and physical accesses and addresses.
How are rack groups interconnected?
By a high-speed 8-way switch
What is a high-performance clustering example?
Each node being a 32-CPU rack.
What is a refresh cycle?
Each transfer of a full screen of data from the display generator to the monitor.
What is compression with secondary storage?
Data going to storage device is compressed prior to storage and decompressed when read from the storage device
What is compression with data communication?
Data is compressed prior to transmission across a low-bandwidth channel and decompressed as it leaves the channel
What happens when reading from a cache?
Data is not consumed.
How does reading from a cache work?
Data is read from the storage device into the cache in anticipation of future read requests.
How does writing to a cache work?
Data is sent and written immediately to the cache, and write completion is acknowledged before data is written to the storage device.
What happens during a send operation?
Data/command(s) are activated and sent for one cycle
What are the two common approaches to lossy compression?
Decompression algorithm isn't a mirror of the compression algorithm or there is no decompression algorithm
Where is a cache controller often found?
Dedicated processor or part-time in a general-purpose CPU.
What is the term for the risk of immediate write acknowledgement?
Delayed write risk.
What are the options for immediate write acknowledge?
Enabled, selectively enabled, or disabled.
What does a bar-code scanner do?
Detects specific patterns of bars or boxes.
What is a keyboard controller?
Device that generates scan codes when keys are pressed.
What is a bar-code reader?
Device that uses scanning lasers to detect bars in bar codes.
What is a DAC?
Digital-to-analog converter.
What is an active matrix display?
Display using transistors for each pixel.
What does dpi stand for?
Dots per inch, a measure of resolution.
What usually has the highest priority in terms of interrupts?
Error conditions
Why is scaling out gradually supplanting scaling up?
Due to improvements in network data transfer rates and software for managing multicomputer configurations.
Why are multicore chips becoming more common?
Due to the difficulty of shrinking process size and increasing clock rate.
What is a pixel?
Each cell in the video matrix that represents one part of an image.
What are the options for implementing a buffer in the example of transferring data from primary storage to a laser printer?
In the bus port, in the device controller, or in the printer itself.
What is the performance impact of different buffer sizes?
Increasing buffer size reduces CPU overhead but has diminishing returns on bus overhead.
What is scaling up in computer power?
Increasing power by employing more powerful computers.
What is scaling out in computer power?
Increasing power by employing multiple computers in parallel.
What is L1 cache?
Integrated with each CPU's control unit
What are OCR devices used for?
Interpreting bitmap content through optical scanning.
What is the interrupt value called?
Interrupt code
What does the interrupt table match?
Interrupt codes with memory addresses of programs that handle the interrupt
What does the control bus carry?
Interrupt signals
What happens when an interrupt occurs while another interrupt is being processed?
Interrupts are usually prioritized by interrupt code
What happens when the CPU detects an interrupt?
It calls the supervisor
How is Video RAM (VRAM) different from ordinary RAM?
It can be written and read simultaneously by video processor.
What happens to the stack pointer after a POP operation?
It is decremented
What happens to a lower-priority interrupt while processing a higher-priority interrupt?
It is held until the higher-priority processing is completed
What happens to the stack pointer after a PUSH operation?
It is incremented
What is the advantage of connecting multiple devices to a single bus slot?
It reduces the number of bus slots and the length of the bus.
What happens when the interrupt handler exits?
It returns control to the supervisor
What is the purpose of the clock in bus communication?
It serves as a common timing reference to coordinate sending and receiving devices
What is the challenge for I/O data transfer capacity in multicore microprocessors?
It struggles to keep pace with increasing computing power.
Why does compression make economic sense?
It substitutes processing resources for data communication or storage resources
What is JPEG?
Joint Photographic Experts Group, a common bitmap compression format.
What are some examples of logical/physical translations for different devices?
Keyboard: read transfers a few bytes representing the last keystroke. Video: assigns addresses to pixel locations and updates pixels with address and content. Disk: assigns addresses to sectors and reads/writes data.
47. Modern ____ displays achieve high-quality color display with organic compounds.
LED
What are some examples of applications that are too big for a single computer?
Large-scale transaction processing, data mining, large-scale numerical simulations
How does cache size affect performance?
Larger cache size can lead to better performance.
What happens to quality in lossy compression as compression ratio increases?
Quality generally decreases
40. Components of a video controller include display generator circuitry, software stored in ROM, a video processor, and ____.
RAM
Why has compression become increasingly attractive?
Rapid increases in processor performance relative to data communication and storage performance
What is compression ratio?
Ratio of uncompressed to compressed data size
What is a cache hit?
Read access for data already in the cache.
What is a cache miss?
Read access for data not already in the cache.
What are the two types of read operations that provide performance gain?
Read after write and read-ahead.
What is the most significant performance gain associated with caching?
Read operations.
What is an example of a simple interrupt handling process?
Reading from a file
What happens when the receiving device has emptied enough buffer space?
Receiving device sends a message to restart transmission.
What happens when the buffer is full?
Receiving device sends a message to stop transmission.
What is compression?
Reducing data size using algorithms
What is compression?
Reducing the size of data to save storage space.
Why is caching more prevalent today than it was twenty years ago?
Refer to the last 10 pages of Chapter 4 for the answer.
What are the limitations of parallel channels?
Relatively slow, requires same physical interface and clock speed.
What is a cache swap?
Replacement of existing data in cache with data from the storage device.
Why are efficient protocols more complex?
Require a more complex command structure and more control bus lines.
What does the supervisor do before branching to an interrupt handler?
Resets the interrupt register to zero
What does the operating system do when a read request is sent to the disk controller?
Suspends the program and executes other programs while the disk accesses the requested data
What does the CPU use to communicate with secondary storage and input/output devices?
System bus and device controllers
What was the system like in the 'bad old days'?
System bus connected all devices
44. ____ technology etches display pixels and the transistors and traces that control/illuminate them onto a glass substrate.
TFT
What is compression?
Technique that reduces data size
What are some hardware and software techniques for improving data efficiency?
Techniques for improving data efficiency include compression, caching, buffering, and prefetching
What is buffering?
Temporary storage of data.
What is the bus protocol?
The 'language' of the bus.
What happens if the interrupt register is filled?
The CPU branches to the operating system supervisor
What is cache management intelligence?
The ability to efficiently manage the content of a cache.
What is circuitry?
The arrangement of electronic components to create a functional circuit.
What is the risk of immediate write acknowledgement?
The cache is volatile, so if power is lost or the system crashes, the written data may be lost.
What is the bus clock rate?
The clock rate of a bus, similar to the CPU.
What happens if the requested data is already in the cache?
The data is immediately transmitted from the cache.
What is the driving force behind the shift towards scaling out?
The need for flexibility and the ability to quickly redeploy computing resources.
What is display resolution?
The number of pixels displayed per linear measurement unit.
What is the refresh rate?
The number of refresh cycles per second, usually stated in hertz.
What is the purpose of examining connections among devices in the device manager?
To create a map of device and bus interconnections
What are scanning lasers used for?
To detect bars in bar-code readers.
What is the purpose of clusters in scaling out?
To employ multiple computers in parallel.
What is the purpose of grids in scaling out?
To employ multiple computers in parallel.
What is the process of assigning one or more I/O ports to a device?
To enable the CPU to interact with the device using the same protocol
What is the purpose of placing data in the cache ahead of time?
To improve reading performance by anticipating future read requests.
What is the purpose of copying data from the cache to the storage device later?
To improve writing performance by acknowledging write completion before writing to the storage device.
What is the purpose of an I/O port?
To pass data between the CPU and a peripheral device
What is the purpose of motherboard and device connectors?
To physically connect peripheral devices to the motherboard.
Why does the CPU issue a command to a peripheral device and then do something else?
To prevent I/O wait states
What is the purpose of L3 primary storage caches in multicore microprocessors?
To provide large storage capacity.
What is the purpose of lossy compression?
To reduce data size, even if it doesn't reproduce original data exactly
What is the purpose of lossless compression?
To reproduce original data exactly
What is the function of an interrupt?
To signal the CPU that an event has occurred that requires its attention
What is the purpose of a buffer?
To temporarily store data during the transfer between two devices.
Give an example of resolving data transfer unit differences.
Transfer from primary storage to laser printer via system bus.
What does the supervisor do when it recognizes the interrupt code?
Transfers control to the appropriate interrupt handler
What does the interrupt handler do?
Transfers data from the I/O port to the application program memory area
What does the disk controller do when the read access is completed?
Transfers data to a designated memory address and sends an interrupt to indicate data is ready
What is a thin film transistor (TFT)?
Transistor embedded in a device like a display surface.
13. Because plasma displays actively generate colored light near the display surface, they're brighter and have a wider viewing angle than LCDs.
True
For video display, a pixel displays no light or light of a specific color and intensity.
True
Image quality improves as dots per inch increases.
True
On paper, pixel size corresponds to the smallest drop of ink that can be placed accurately on the page
True
What is the cache size ratio for a typical server secondary storage cache?
Unknown.
What does the supervisor do with the interrupt code?
Uses it as an index into an interrupt table
How is secondary storage cache usually implemented now?
Using 'extra' system RAM with cache management by the OS using the CPU
What is the data transfer rate mismatch between the system bus and the CPU?
Usually two orders of magnitude or more.
What is the efficiency of bus protocols?
Varies.
What are monitors?
Video display panels.
67. Most current speech-recognition systems are ____, which means they must be "trained" to recognize the sounds of human speakers.
b. speaker dependent
48. OLED displays combine features from both LED and plasma display, including: ____.
b. thin, bright, and low power
75. A stored set of numbers describing the content of all pixels in an image is called a(n) ____________________.
bitmap
65. ____ is the process of recognizing and responding to the meaning embedded in spoken words, phrases, or sentences.
c. Speech recognition
61. The process of converting analog sound waves to digital representation is called ____.
c. sampling
54. Touch position sensing in a touch screen is usually based on ____.
capacitance
34. Written Western languages are based on systems of symbols called ____.
characters
35. A collection of characters of similar style and appearance is called a ____.
font
88. ____________________ touchscreen input interprets a sequence of touch information as a single command
gesture based
76. ____________________ dithering is usually called half-toning.
grayscale
77. Postscript is a(n) ____________________ designed mainly for printed documents, although it can also be used to generate video display outputs.
image description language (IDL)
What are subtractive colors?
Cyan, magenta, and yellow (inverse of additive colors).
What is a system bus?
A shared channel that connects devices.
What is read after write?
A small gain in performance.
What is a buffer?
A small storage area that holds data in transit from one device or location to another
What is the stack pointer?
A special purpose register that always points to the memory address at the top of the stack
What is a point in printing?
A standard pixel size of 1/72 of an inch.
What is a cache?
A storage area that stores frequently accessed data.
What is PDF?
A superset of PostScript for distributing compressed documents.
What is a palette?
A table of colors.
What is CMY?
Abbreviation for subtractive colors.
What is CMYK?
Four-dye color scheme.
What are the benefits of increasing buffer size?
Frees CPU cycles and increases bus efficiency.
97. Of liquid crystal, plasma, LED, and OLED displays, which is best and why?
If you ignore cost and operational lifetime then LOED displays have the better performance characteristics than the other types. They're the thinnest, are at least tied for the brightest, are at least tied for the lowest power consumption, and have the best color accuracy. Adding cost and operational lifetime into the comparison complicates it because OLED has shorter operational lifetimes than liquid crystal and LED displays and because OLED displays are the most expensive of all types. Those statements are accurate as of 2015 but they may not be a few years later because OLED technology is the newest and the most rapidly improving.
What is L2 cache?
Implemented outside of but dedicated to a single CPU
What is a cache used for?
Improving performance of read/write accesses to slower storage devices.
Where is multi-CPU architecture commonly found?
In midrange and mainframe computers.
What is MPEG?
Moving Picture Experts Group
What is the rate of a parallel bus?
Much lower than the CPU clock rate (e.g., 66 MHz)
What are examples of scaling up?
Multicore microprocessors and multi-CPU architecture.
What are some common parallel processing architectures?
Multicore microprocessors and multi-CPU architectures
What is polyphonic sound generation?
Multifrequency sound generation.
What is the modern world like in terms of buses?
Multiple buses optimized for different purposes
What are multicore microprocessors?
Multiple processing cores on a single chip.
What is MIDI?
Musical Instrument Digital Interface, a standard for storing and transporting control information between computers and electronic musical instruments.
Describe the interrupt processing sequence for accessing a new page across the network.
N/A
What does hit ratio depend on?
Nature of read operations (e.g., random vs. sequential reads).
What happens to a lower-priority interrupt when a higher-priority interrupt arrives?
Processing of the lower-priority interrupt is suspended
What is a scan code?
Output generated by a keyboard controller when keys are pressed.
What is monophonic output?
Output where only one frequency (note) can be generated at a time.
What type of connections does early PCI versions use?
Parallel electrical connections.
What is the architecture optimized for?
Parallel processing with significant need for inter-node communication and flexible assignment of compute nodes to problems and problem pieces
What is Direct3D?
Part of Microsoft DirectX suite in Windows OSs.
What is the PCI bus?
Peripheral Component Interface bus standard.
What are the advantages of serial channels?
Physically smaller, higher speed, allows different operating speeds.
How does an inkjet printer work?
Places liquid ink directly onto paper.
What is a cursor?
Pointer on a display device.
What components are shared in a multi-CPU architecture?
Primary storage, secondary storage, system bus, and I/O devices.
What factors limit the actual clock rate of a bus?
Probability of error, cost/performance trade-off, slowest device in the bus chain
What is speech recognition?
Process of recognizing and responding to spoken words.
What is dithering?
Process that generates color approximations.
What resources do compression and decompression algorithms consume?
Processing resources (CPU and primary storage)
What is dual-porting?
Simultaneous read/write capability.
What were the inefficiencies of the old system?
Slowest devices limited system-wide performance
What is a device driver?
Software that allows the operating system to communicate with a specific device.
What are phonemes?
Sounds that correspond to the sounds of each letter of the alphabet.
What is a synthetic speech?
Speech generated by assembling phonemes from character outputs.
What does speaker dependent mean?
Speech-recognition system trained to recognize specific speakers.
What are the two important differences between the source and destination of an I/O operation?
Speed of data transfer and data transfer unit size.
What does the supervisor do after the interrupt handler exits?
Starts the application program at the next instruction after the read request
What does the CPU do when an interrupt is detected?
Stores it in the interrupt register
What is caching?
Storing frequently accessed data for faster retrieval.
69. ____ is a standard for storing and transporting control information between computers and electronic musical instruments.
a. Musical Instrument Digital Interface
80. A(n) ____________________ matrix display uses one or more transistors for every pixel.
active
43. A(n) ____ display includes one or more transistors for every display pixel.
active matrix
93. A device that generates spoken messages based on text input is called a(n) ____________________.
audio response unit
60. ____ devices combine optical-scanning technology with a special-purpose processor or software to interpret bitmap content.
b. Optical character recognition
27. Sound varies by frequency (pitch) and intensity (loudness).
true
30. A significant advantage of MIDI is its compact storage format.
true
9. An IDL can represent image components as embedded fonts, vectors, curves and shapes, and embedded bitmaps.
true
What is the CPU speed?
2 GHz.
What is the capacity of the secondary storage?
20 Terabytes
What is the cache size ratio for a typical PC primary storage cache?
2048:1.
What is the data transfer speed of PCI bus?
250+ MBytes/second.
Why do modern systems typically use 2D bar codes instead of more traditional bar codes composed of lines of varying thickness
2D bar codes can store more data in the same amount of 2D space
85. A(n) mouse that can detect motion with ____________________ dimensions uses an embedded gyroscope.
3
What is the size of RAM dedicated to secondary storage cache?
4 GBytes
What is the data transfer speed of USB 2.0?
480 Mbits/second (60 MBps).
What is the size ratio?
5000:1
What is the typical size of embedded cache in hard disks today?
8-32 MB (none 20 years ago).
What is the current range of core counts for multicore chips?
8-way, 12-way, and 15-way.
How many transfers are required with a 1 KB buffer?
9775 transfers.
What is required to prevent buffer overflow?
A 'hand-shaking' protocol, usually part of the bus protocol, where a device wanting to transfer data asks permission and the receiving device grants permission if there is empty space in the buffer.
What is an image description language (IDL)?
A language that symbolically describes the content of an image.
What is read-ahead?
A large gain in performance.
What is the common configuration of each 'CPU' in a multi-CPU architecture?
A multicore microprocessor.
What are light-emitting diodes (LEDs)?
A new form of flat panel display.
96. Explain the term point size as it relates to fonts.
A point is 1/72 of an inch. A font's point size is the number of points between the top of the highest character and the bottom of the lowest character in the font.
What is a plotter?
A printer that generates line drawings on wide sheets or rolls of paper.
What is a dot matrix printer?
A printer that moves a print head containing a matrix of pins over the paper.
What is a cache controller?
A processor that manages cache content.
What does a peer-to-peer bus require?
A protocol for passing around the bus master role and a prioritization scheme for competing requests.
What is a logical access?
A read or write operation between the CPU and a device.
What is a stack?
A reserved primary storage area that holds register values of suspended programs
How can performance be improved in terms of data transfers to/from the CPU?
By going 'through' memory, commonly called direct memory access (DMA).
How can the data transfer rate of a bus be increased?
By increasing the clock rate, increasing the number of bits transmitted per clock cycle, or using a more efficient bus protocol
How can new devices be incorporated into an existing computer?
By installing the device into an available bus slot
How is the data transfer rate of a bus computed?
By multiplying the data transfer unit size by the clock rate
How can a buffer improve the efficiency of a faster device during an I/O operation?
By reducing the number of interruptions and reducing processing overhead for the interruptions.
How are a suspended program's register values restored when it resumes execution?
By using the PUSH and POP instructions to copy/move values from the stack back to registers
What does a separate bus connect in the modern world?
CPU to memory
What does the system bus connect?
CPU, primary storage, and peripheral devices.
What is hit ratio?
Cache hits as a percentage of read operations.
How does a cache differ from a buffer?
Cache is bidirectional and used only for storage devices.
What factors affect cache-related performance improvements?
Cache size and cache management intelligence.
How has cache size and management sophistication changed over time?
Cache sizes have increased and management has become more advanced.
What is an expansion card?
Card that connects to the system bus and provides additional functionality.
What is the purpose of the data bus?
Carries bits of a data item being transferred.
What is the purpose of the address bus?
Carries bits of a memory address.
What is the purpose of the control bus?
Carries bits of commands, responses, status codes, etc.
What do efficient protocols require more lines for?
Carrying data, address, and command information simultaneously.
Where can you find more information on serial vs. parallel channels?
Chapter 8.
What are examples of scaling out?
Clusters and grids.
What is 24-bit color?
Color representation using three 8-bit numbers.
What is lossy compression?
Compressing then decompressing does not reproduce original data
What is lossless compression?
Compression followed by decompression exactly reproduces original data
What is a compression algorithm?
Computational technique for reducing data size
What is a decompression algorithm?
Computational technique for reversing compression algorithm
What is the purpose of a separate bus for video?
Connects memory to video controller
What is a video controller?
Connects to system bus or video bus and connects to a monitor.
What is a digitizer?
Consists of a tablet and pen/stylus for input.
What does a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) do?
Converts digital to continuous electrical signal.
What does a photosensor do?
Converts incoming light energy into outgoing electrical energy.
What can offset quality loss in lossy compression?
Extra processing resources, but only if a decompression algorithm is in use
Image quality improves as pixel size increases.
False
What is a video display terminal (VDT)?
First computer video display device with integrated keyboard and TV screen.
What is the data transfer rate of a newer serial bus?
For example, 312.5 MBps (1 bit × 2.5 GHz)
What is the data transfer rate of an older parallel bus?
For example, 528 MBps (64 bits × 66 MHz)
99. Describe the components of a sound card.
General-purpose audio hardware can be integrated on a PC motherboard or packaged as an expansion card that connects to the system bus (commonly called a sound card). At minimum, sound cards include an ADC, a DAC, a low-power amplifier, and connectors (jacks) for a microphone and a speaker or headphones. More elaborate cards might include the following: • Multichannel surround sound, such as Dolby 5.1 • A general-purpose Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) synthesizer • MIDI input and output jacks • A more powerful amplifier to accommodate larger speakers and generate more volume
What does an optical scanner do?
Generates bitmap representations of printed images.
What is speech synthesis?
Generating synthetic speech using stored vocal sounds.
What is a cathode ray tube (CRT)?
Glass vacuum tube with an electron gun.
What is GIF?
Graphics Interchange Format, a common bitmap compression format.
What is half-toning?
Grayscale dithering.
What is the effective data transfer rate in a bus where a command is transferred in one cycle and the data is transferred in the next?
Half of the previously computed rate.
What is interrupt processing?
Handling of interrupts by the CPU.
What is the priority of lower-numbered interrupts?
Higher priority
What usually has middle priority in terms of interrupts?
I/O events
What is PostScript?
IDL mainly used for printed documents and video display outputs.
What is a vector?
Line segment with angle and length in relation to a point.
What are the effects of lossy compression on images?
Loss of detail, blotchy color patches, jagged edges, and shadow lines
What is the priority of program service requests?
Lowest priority
What is an example of lossy compression?
MP3 files
Give examples of compression techniques.
MP3, GIF, JPEG, video DVDs, H.323 video-conferencing, compressed tape formats, automatic compression of 'old' files on secondary storage
What does the system bus connect in the modern world?
Many devices in the system
What are the two approaches to controlling bus access?
Master-slave bus and peer-to-peer bus.
What is a digital signal processor (DSP)?
Microprocessor for audio or graphical data.
What are some examples of caching in modern technology?
Microprocessors and secondary storage controllers.
64. ____ output is only able to generate one frequency (note) at a time.
Monophonic
What is the cost of a bus and all devices that interface with it in efficient protocols?
More expensive.
What is the difference in intelligence required to manage a cache compared to a buffer?
More intelligence is required to manage cache content.
Why was there a change in how secondary storage cache is implemented?
Most computer systems have 'extra CPU cycles', system RAM is cheap and motherboards have been redesigned to accommodate lots of it, the operating system can best decide how to allocate RAM for performance improvement, and the operating system is in the best position to make cache replacement decisions since it processes all secondary storage operations
What should you look for in the device manager to identify buses?
Nodes with ACPI in their names, specific buses like 'PCI bus'
For how long do devices have access to the bus in the bus protocol?
Not specified.
How are bit values encoded in a line in the bus protocol?
Not specified.
How are commands, errors, and status information encoded in bit values on the control bus in the bus protocol?
Not specified.
How do devices 'ask' for access to the bus in the bus protocol?
Not specified.
What are multiple buses?
Not specified.
What are the electrical or optical characteristics of each signal in the bus protocol?
Not specified.
Which device(s) get to use the bus when in the bus protocol?
Not specified.
Which lines are used for what purposes in the bus protocol?
Not specified.
What is chromatic depth?
Number of distinct colors or gray shades.
How were secondary storage caches typically implemented in the 1990s?
On the secondary storage controller with a special purpose processor as the cache controller and installed memory chips or DIMMs
What does one clock cycle represent?
One transfer of command information, data, or both
When does the CPU become a bus master in terms of data transfers to/from the CPU?
Only when absolutely necessary.
95. Describe the relationship between image quality, pixel size, and resolution?
Resolution is the number of pixels per linear inch in a printed or displayed image. As resolution increases, the amount of fine detail in the image also increases. People perceive images with greater amounts of fine detail as being of higher quality.
What is the purpose of the power bus?
Routes electrical power to attached devices.
What are bus protocols?
Rules for communication between devices on a bus.
What is chromatic resolution?
Same as chromatic depth.
57. Bar-code readers use ____that sweep a narrow beam back and forth across the bar code.
Scanning laser
What does a mark sensor do?
Scans for light or dark marks at specific locations on a page.
What are some examples of other separate buses?
Secondary storage (SCSI and SATA), external devices (USB and Firewire)
What advantage does MP3 take advantage of?
Sensitivity that varies with audio frequency, inability to recognize faint tones of one frequency simultaneously with much louder tones in nearby frequencies, inability to recognize soft sounds that occur shortly after louder sounds
What type of connections do later PCI versions use?
Serial data channels.
What is a vector list?
Series of concatenated or linked vectors used to construct shapes.
What is a bar code?
Series of vertical bars with varied thickness and spacing.
What is a bitmap?
Set of numbers describing pixel content in an image.
What is L3 cache?
Shared among multiple CPU cores on a single chip
What are the advantages of a high clock rate in a bus?
Shorter distance and faster communication
What can surprising small cache sizes yield?
Significant improvements.
What is the rate of a serial bus?
Similar to the CPU clock rate (e.g., 2.5 GHz) but only a few bits are transmitted per cycle
What is the CPU interface to bus devices like?
Simpler, more efficient, and faster
What happens when the interrupt handler completes its work?
The operating system resumes execution of the program that was interrupted
What does RGB refer to?
The primary colors for a video display.
What is sampling?
The process of converting analog sound waves to digital representation.
What happens during a receive operation?
The receiver has one cycle to recognize the message and read its content
How does data flow through a buffer?
The sending device adds data to the buffer, gradually filling it. The receiving device (or buffer manager) consumes data in the buffer, gradually emptying it.
What is the machine state?
The set of register values copied/moved during stack operations
What is bus protocol?
The set of rules and procedures governing bus communication
What is a large-format printer?
The term that replaced 'plotter'.
What causes the content of a buffer to rise and fall?
The timing and relative speed of addition and consumption of data.
What is a physical access?
The translation of a logical access into a specific physical location on a device.
How does a device controller translate logical accesses?
The translation specifics vary depending on the device specifics.
What happens if the write to the storage device is not completed?
The written data is lost.
What is the advantage of multicore microprocessors in terms of transistor count?
They allow for increasing transistor count.
How do buffering and caching use RAM?
They use it in different amounts and different ways to achieve performance improvements
Why have flat panel displays replaced CRTs?
Thinner, higher quality images, and consume less power.
How many levels of primary storage cache do microprocessors typically have?
Three levels, with the largest measured in dozens of megabytes (one level measured in kilobytes 20 years ago).
How does the CPU recognize and process interrupts?
Through a hardwired mechanism
What is the purpose of an I/O channel?
To connect multiple devices to a single bus port
When is a buffer generally required?
When data unit transfer sizes differ.
When is a cache usually considered cost-effective?
When hit ratio is greater than 60%.
In what situations does compression make economic sense?
When uncompressed data exceeds current technology capabilities or when processing resources are less expensive than saved storage or data communication resources
How does a laser printer operate?
With an electrical charge and the attraction of ink to this charge.
What is an example of lossless compression?
ZIP files
36. The number of distinct colors or gray shades that can be displayed is sometimes called the ____.
chromatic depth
92. ____________________ is a series of phonemes interspersed with periods of silence.
continuous speech
53. Pointing devices can be used to enter drawings into a computer system or control the position of a(n) ____ on a display device.
cursor
68. A(n) ____ is a microprocessor specialized for processing continuous streams of audio or graphical data.
d. digital signal processor
A(n) ____ accepts a stream of bits representing sound samples and generating a continuous electrical signal that can be amplified and routed to a speaker.
digital-to-analog converter (DAC)
38. ____ is a process that generates color approximations by placing small dots of different colors in an interlocking pattern
dithering
49. A(n) ____ printer moves a print head containing a matrix of pins over the paper.
dot matrix
33. In the United States, resolution is generally stated in ____.
dots per inch
10. IDLs are a simple form of compression.
false
12. Phosphors emit colored light in liquid crystal displays.
false
15. Impact technology began with dot matrix printers.
false
16. Color laser output uses four separate print generators.
false
19. Modern bar codes encode data in three dimensions.
false
21. Error rates of 1-2% are common using OCR software with mixed-font text and even higher with handwritten text.
false
23. Moving image quality improves as the number of frames per second (fps) decreases.
false
24. Typically, digital cameras capture 14 to 20 fps.
false
26. For sound reproduction that sounds natural to people, frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 KHz must be sampled at least 96,000 times per second.
false
28. Continuous speech is a series of nonstop interconnected phonemes.
false
7. Point size refers to characters' width.
false
8. A monochrome display can display black, white, and many shades of gray in between, so it requires 8 bits per pixel.
false
Decades ago, printers adopted 1/32 of an inch as a standard pixel size
false
For people and computers, a printed character must exactly match a specific pixel map to be recognizable.
false
90. Digital still cameras, video cameras, and Webcams use an array of ____________________ placed behind lenses to capture reflected and focused ambient light.
photosensors
31. Each cell in the matrix representing one part of a digital image is called a ____.
pixel
72. To an observer, the quality of a printed or displayed image increases as ____________________ size increases.
pixel
As ____________________ size increases image quality improves
pixel
46. ____ displays use excited gas and phosphors to generate colored light.
plasma
82. A(n) plasma display pixel excites gas into a(n) ____________________ plasma state to generate UV light.
plasma
83. Of all flat panel displays, ____________________ have the shortest operational lifetimes.
plasma displays
52. A ____ is a printer that generates line drawings on wide sheets or rolls of paper.
plotter
73. Font size is measured in units called ____________________.
points
94. The term ____________________ describes hardware that can generate multiple sound frequencies at the same time.
polyphonic
91. Human-assisted ____________________ procedures are required in many applications to deal with error rates of OCR technology.
quality control
78. Each transfer of a full screen of data from the display generator to the monitor is called a(n) ____________________.
refresh cycle
42. The number of refresh cycles per second is normally stated in hertz and called the ____.
refresh rate
32. The ____ of a display is the number of pixels displayed per linear measurement unit.
resolution
84. When keys are pressed, a keyboard controller generates output called a(n) ____________________.
scan code
86. A(n) ____________________ is an LCD or LED display with additional TFT layers that detect the position of electrical field changes based on capacitance.
touchscreen
11. LCD displays have less contrast than other flat panel displays because color filters reduce the total amount of light passing through the front of the panel.
true
14. OLED displays combine many of the best features of LCD and plasma displays.
true
17. An advantage of optical over mechanical mice is a lack of moving parts that can be contaminated with dust and dirt.
true
18. Bar-code readers are typically used to track large numbers of inventory items, as in grocery store inventory and checkout, package tracking, warehouse inventory control, and zip code routing for postal mail.
true
20. Character and text recognition is most accurate when text is printed in a single font and style, with all text oriented in the same direction on the page
true
22. A digital still camera captures and stores one image at a time.
true
25. Most portable data capture devices combine a keyboard, mark or bar-code scanner, and wireless connection to a wired base station, cash register, or computer system
true
39. In graphics, a ____ is a line segment with a specific angle and length in relation to a point of origin.
vector
41. Video display panels are connected to a ____ that's connected to a port on the system bus or a dedicated video bus.
video controller
