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CDA Final Practice Questions

Terms in this set (29)

We study computer ___________ to become familiar with how circuits and signals collaborate to create working computer systems.
organization
Computer ______________ concerns itself with instruction sets and formats, operation codes, data types, the number and types of registers, addressing modes, main memory access methods, and various I/O mechanisms.
architecture
The _____________ is the agreed-upon interface between all the software that runs on the machine and the hardware that executes it. It allows you to talk to the machine.
instruction set architecture
Clock speeds in today's microprocessors are measured in _____.
GHz
The computer component that makes sure that instructions are decoded and executed properly is the ___________.
control unit
The von Neumann Bottleneck is __________________________.
the single processor-memory path
At the most basic level, a computer is a device consisting of three pieces: A processor; an I/O mechanism and a(n) ______________.
memory
In the von Neumann architecture, the central processing unit (CPU) consists of registers, an arithmetic-logic unit (ALU), and a(n) ______________.
control unit
Expressed as a power of two, there are ____________ kilobytes in a megabyte.
2^10
In 1965, one of the founders of Intel predicted "The density of transistors in an integrated circuit will double every year." This is now known as:
Moore's Law
The statement "The cost of capital equipment to build semiconductors will double every four years." is known as:
Rock's Law
Computer chips having multiple processing units on a single chip are _____ architectures.
multicore
The level of the computer hierarchy that is composed of gates and wires is the .
digital logic level
The level of the computer hierarchy where an operating system functions is the ______.
system software level
A terabyte represents what power of two?
30
A kilobyte represents what power of two?
10
Expressed as a power of two, there are ____________ megabytes in a terabyte.
(Note: input format 2^XX, like 2^30)
2^20
Expressed as a power of two, there are ____________ kilobytes in a megabyte.
(Note: use the format 2^XX)
2^10
There are ____________ nanoseconds in a millisecond.
(Note: input format XXX,XXX,XXX, like 1,000)
1,000,000
The approach of using a combination of memory types to provide the best performance at the best cost is called:
hierarchical memory
The offset field of a main memory address is used to determine:
the location of the desired data in the cache block
When the requested data resides in a given level of memory, we call this a ________.
hit
The purpose of a TLB is:
to cache page table entries
Which of the following types of memory has the longest (slowest) access time?
secondary memory
If a cache access requires one clock cycle and dealing with cache misses requires an additional five clock cycles, which of the following cache hit rates results in an effective access time of 2 clock cycles?
80%
The average time required to reach a memory storage location and retrieve its contents is called:
effective access time
Cache mapping is necessary because:
the address generated by the CPU must be converted to a cache location
Cache replacement policies are necessary:
to determine which block in cache should be the victim block
The tag field of a main memory address is used to determine:
if the cache entry is the desired block