Basic Computer Architecture

Question 1

A computer system uses both of these to process data into information.

Answer 1

Hardware and Software

Question 2

What is Hardware? give examples of hardware.

Answer 2

Processors, Storage, and Input & Output devices

Question 3

What is Software? give examples of software.

Answer 3

System and Application Software

Question 4

What is referred to the case of the computer unit that protects the motherboard, hard disk drive, memory, and other hardware components?

Answer 4

Chassis, Case, or system unit

Question 5

Name the parts of the motherboard

Answer 5

CMOS battery, PCI slots, AGP slot, north and south bridge, connectors, CPU socket, CPU fan and mounting points, DRAM memory slot, Power connector, IDE connector

Question 6

Name the six types of ports (Cite examples)

Answer 6

USB, Storage, Video, Audio, Power, Network

Question 7

Main circuit of the computer

Answer 7

Motherboard/System board

Question 8

The CPU is known as

Answer 8

The brain of the computer

Question 9

What covers the cpu and releases the heat from it

Answer 9

Heat sink and Fan

Question 10

The chipset is in charge of what?

Answer 10

Communication between the components and determines how many high speed components can the motherboard support

Question 11

What is known as the main memory? and what does it do?

Answer 11

RAM (Random Access Memory) and it stores data but it gets erased when the computer is shut offed

Question 12

What is used for long term storage? and what do laptops use?

Answer 12

Hard disk drive and Solid sate drives

Question 13

The power supply / Laptop AC adaptor does what?

Answer 13

Converts electricity into a source that computers use
(AC 120 / 220 V) = (DC 5 / 15 V)

Question 14

to improve performance expansion cards/adaptor cards are placed into?

Answer 14

Expansion slots

Question 15

Via expansion slots, this is used as a pathway to connect the CPU to peripheral devices

Answer 15

PCI (Peripheral component Interconnect)

Question 16

What is used to connect disk controllers / bus adaptors to hard disk drives and optical drives

Answer 16

SATA (Serial advance technology attachment)

Question 17

What is used to keep information intact when the system shuts off

Answer 17

CMOS batter (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor)

Question 18

Two types of processors

Answer 18

Control Unit and Arithmetic Logic unit

Question 19

State the machine cycle

Answer 19

F - Fetch
D - Decode
E - Execute
S - Storage

Question 20

processors contain small, high speed storage units called?

Answer 20

Registers

Question 21

What controls the timing of all computer operations

Answer 21

System clock

Question 22

The system clock generates what? and what is it equivalent to?

Answer 22

Ticks (One tick is equal to one clock cycle)

Question 23

Are processors superscalar?

Answer 23

TRUE

Question 24

What does clock speed refer to?

Answer 24

pace of the system clock

Question 25

The faster the clock speed, the more instructions the processer can execute?

Answer 25

TRUE