CSCI 223 Quiz 2

Question 1

assembly language definition

Answer 1

low-level programming language which is a human readable, textual representation of machine code

Question 2

assembly language facts

Answer 2

each statement corresponds to a single machine code; each assembly language is specific to a particular processor architecture (ISA); it contains a lot of hardware info

Question 3

ISA

Answer 3

Instruction Set Architecture: interface b/w software and hardware (e.g. x86, ARM, MIPS, …); assembly language is very important to the ISA

Question 4

what translates high level languages to low level languages?

Answer 4

the compiler

Question 5

examples of high level programming

Answer 5

C/C++, Java, …

Question 6

examples of low level programming

Answer 6

x86, ARM, MIPS, …

Question 7

a system is made up of

Answer 7

hardware and software

Question 8

software is made up of

Answer 8

application programs and the operating system

Question 9

hardware is made up of

Answer 9

processor, memory, I/O devices, etc.

Question 10

ALU

Answer 10

arithmetic logic unit

Question 11

what is the fastest yet smallest memory space?

Answer 11

the register file (inside the CPU)

Question 12

onchip memory versus offchip memory

Answer 12

offchip: outside CPU and onchip: inside CPU (e.g. main memory is offchip; cache, register file is onchip)

Question 13

onchip memory has (faster/slower) access time than main memory

Answer 13

faster

Question 14

memory hierarchy generalization

Answer 14

smaller, faster, and costlier (per byte) storage devices at the top to larger, slower, and cheaper (per byte) storage devices at the bottom

Question 15

memory hierarchy L0

Answer 15

registers

Question 16

memory hierarchy L1

Answer 16

L1 cache (SRAM)

Question 17

memory hierarchy L2

Answer 17

L2 cache (SRAM)

Question 18

memory hierarchy L3

Answer 18

L3 cache (SRAM)

Question 19

memory hierarchy L4

Answer 19

main memory (DRAM)

Question 20

memory hierarchy L5

Answer 20

local secondary storage (local disks)

Question 21

memory hierarchy L6

Answer 21

remote secondary storage (distributed file systems, web servers)

Question 22

between levels ? and ? in the memory hierarchy is where we can differentiate onchip (above) and offchip (below)

Answer 22

L3 and up is onchip, L4 and below is offchip

Question 23

main memory holds ? retrieved from local disks

Answer 23

disk blocks

Question 24

cache holds ? retrieved from memory

Answer 24

cache lines

Question 25

CPU registers hold ? retrieved from cache memory

Answer 25

words

Question 26

why does the cache matter?

Answer 26

for performance; performance depends on access patterns

Question 27

binary representation

Answer 27

everything is represented as a sequence of binary numbers in digital systems (0 or 1)

Question 28

byte

Answer 28

8 bit chunk; smallest data access unit

Question 29

each byte has a ? memory address

Answer 29

unique

Question 30

machine code views memory as ?

Answer 30

a very large array of bytes (referred to as virtual memory)

Question 31

widely-used numeral systems

Answer 31

decimal (base 10), hexadecimal/hex (base 16), octal (base 8), and binary (base 2)