Chapter Five - Computing Components

Question 1

addressability?

Answer 1

• # OF BITS in each ADDRESSABLE LOCATION in MEMORY. (e.g. 8 bits, 16 bits)

Question 2

arithmetic/logic unit (ALU)?

Answer 2

• COMPUTER COMPONENT that specializes in ARITHMETIC(+,-,/) & LOGICAL OPERATIONS (comparison =,>,

Question 3

register?

Answer 3

• small STORAGE area in CPU used to store used to store INTERMEDIATE values/data. (e.g. (a+b)*c; temporarily stores a+b)

Question 4

input unit?
output unit?
control unit?

Answer 4

• input: device that accepts data to be stored in memory;
• output: device that prints/displays/makes copy of data
• control: computer component that controls actions of other computer components (IR + PC); makes sure instructions are executed in sequence.

Question 5

instruction register? (IR)

program counter? (PC)

Answer 5

(part of control unit)

• IR: contains instruction that is being executed
• PC: contains ADDRESS of next instruction to be executed

Question 6

CPU?

Answer 6

• the “brain” of the computer

- ALU + control unit

Question 7

bus width?

Answer 7

• bus > how information is transferred from b/w components in Von Neumann Machine (w/ wires); bus WIDTH is # of bits bus and transfer SIMULTANEOUSLY.

Question 8

cache memory?

Answer 8

• SMALL, HIGH- SPEED memory used to hold FREQUENTLY USED data

Question 9

pipelining?

Answer 9

• technique used to SPEED UP FETCH-EXECUTE system; splits instruction INTO SMALLER STEPS that can be OVERLAPPED.

Question 10

motherboard?

Answer 10

• MAIN CIRCUIT BOARD of a personal computer (contains von Neumann components)

Question 11

track?
sector?
block?

Answer 11

• track: concentric circles on surface of disk
• sector: section of track
• block: information stored in a sector(continuous sequence of bits)

Question 12

seek time?
latency?
access time?
transfer rate?

Answer 12

• seek time: time it takes for the read/write head to into into position over the specified TRACK.
• latency: time it takes for the specified sector to spin to the right SECTOR
• access time: seek time + latency
• transfer rate: rate at which data is transferred from disk to memory.

Question 13

cylinder?

Answer 13

• all of the TRACKS that LINE UP under one another in a hard disk (multiple disks on top of each other)

Question 14

synchronous processing?

Answer 14

• SINGLE set of INSTRUCTIONS run on DIFFERENT DATA at the same time (using multiple processors)

Question 15

shared memory parallel processor?

Answer 15

• DIFFERENT processors doing DIFFERENT things with DIFFERENT DATA at the same time (requires shared memory in order to communicate)

Question 16

Von Neumann architecture? (5)

Answer 16

• memory unit
• arithmetic/logic unit
• input unit
• output unit
• control unit