Exam 6: System Integration and Performance

The memory bus has a much higher data transfer rate than the system bus because of its shorter length, higher clock rate, and (in most computers) large number of parallel communication lines.

​A system bus connects computer system components, including the CPU, memory, storage, and I/O devices.

Peer-to-peer bus protocols are substantially less complex but more expensive than master-slave bus protocols.

One way to limit wait states is to use an SDRAM cache between the CPU and SRAM primary storage.

​Discuss two ways to increase the maximum bus data transfer rate.

Like a buffer, a(n) ____________________ is a reserved area of high-speed memory (usually RAM) that improves system performance.

During a write operation, a cache acts similarly to a buffer.

With ____ compression, any data input that's compressed and then decompressed is exactly the same as the original input.

A(n) ____ is a communication pathway from the CPU to a peripheral device.

A ____ is a reserved area of main memory accessed on a last-in, first-out (LIFO) basis.

When multiple processors occupy a single motherboard, they share primary storage and a single system bus.

A ____ is a processor that guesses what data will be requested in the near future and loads this data from the storage device into the cache before it's actually requested.

If the CPU is idle while a device completes an access request, the CPU cycles that could have been (but weren't) devoted to instruction execution are called ____.

A(n) ____________________ can improve system performance when two devices have different data transfer rates, as when copying music files from a PC to an iPod via a USB 2.0 connection.

____________________ buses connect a subset of computer components and are specialized for these components' characteristics and communication between them.

The ____ connects only the CPU and memory.

The term ____ describes the ratio of data size in bits or bytes before and after compression.

Using data compression alters the balance of processor resources and communication or storage resources in a computer system.

____________________ ports enable the CPU and bus to interact with a keyboard in the same way they interact with a disk drive or video display.

When the CPU is the focus of all computer activity, it's also the ____.