Week 2 - Data Representation Flashcards
What is a nibble?
Not fucking this up next time.
4-bit half of a 8-bit byte
What is a word?
(in terms of bytes)
2 or more adjacent bytes
16 bits, 32 bits, 64 bits
Why is it called RAM?
(maybe mention SAM, but that’s optional)
The term random access memory means
that it takes the same amount of time to
access any byte in the memory.
Contrast to RAM is sequential access
memory (SAM), where the amount of time
it takes to access a byte depends on its
position in some sequence.
What is ROM?
Also called nonvolatile memory (NVM), the control unit can read the state of each bit but cannot change it. The bits remain in the new state when the power is turned off.
Read Only Memory
What is byte’s address usually expressed in?
(binary, decimal, octal or hexadecimal?)
Hexadecimal.
What is BCD?
Don’t fuck this up again.
It is another code for storing integers. It uses
four bits for each decimal digit. For example, 1234 is 0001 0010 0011 0100.
Binary Coded Decimal
What are the conversion specifiers for unsigned integer, signed decimal integer, string, float and hexadecimal?
because I’m currently deathly scared of % in exams.
%u, %d or %i, %s, %f, %x
What is endianness?
Byte storage order.
Difference between little-endian and big-endian?
Little-endian stores the least significant byte first, while big-endian stores the most significant byte first.
TCP/IP is defined to be big-endian, sometimes called network byte order. The x86-64 architecture is little-endian.
An integer that is more than one byte can be stored with the highest-order byte in the lowest byte address (big-endian) or with the lowest-order byte in the lowest byte address (little-endian).
In big-endian storage, the most significant (“biggest”) byte is stored in the first (lowest-numbered) memory address. In little-endian storage, the value appears to be stored backward, because the least significant (“little end”) byte of the value is stored first in memory.
How are bytes in memory addressed?
Sequentially.
Explain how switches work
Switches in computer organization act as electronic components that control the flow of electrical signals, pivotal for binary logic. In digital systems, switches, when in the ‘on’ position, signify a binary ‘1,’ and when ‘off,’ they represent ‘0.’ These binary states are fundamental for constructing logic gates, memory elements, and processors, forming the basis for intricate computational tasks in digital computing.
Each combination of switches represents a possible state the computer is in. If you wanted to describe what was happening on your computer, you could list a combination of switches. In plain English, this would
be something like “The 1st switch is on, the 2nd one is also on, but the 3rd is off, while the 4th is on.”
