Exam 5: Computer Systems Organization

The ____ of a disk is the time for the beginning of the desired sector to rotate under the read/write head.

To solve the difficulty of scaling memory organization, memories are physically organized into a ____-dimensional organization.

In a two-level memory hierarchy, when the computer needs a piece of information, it looks in RAM first, then cache memory.

A(n) ____ handles the details of input/output and compensates for any speed differences between I/O devices and other parts of the computer.

The first computer to achieve a speed of 1 million floating-point operations per second, 1 ____________________, was the Control Data 6600 in the mid-1960s.

Explain at length what scalability means.

The ____ operation in Von Neumann machines uses a special set of bits known as condition codes.

Draw an analogy between cache memory and a home refrigerator.

The normal mode of operation of a Von Neumann machine is sequential._________________________

The ____ of a disk is the time needed to position the read/write head over the correct track.

In a ____, the original contents of the memory cell are unchanged.

____ machines are designed to directly provide a wide range of powerful features so that finished programs for these processors are shorter.

A cache is typically ____ times faster than RAM but much smaller.

The branch of computer science that studies computers in terms of their major functional units and how they work is known as computer organization.

Both RAM and ROM are memory chips into which information has been prerecorded during manufacture.

The three parts of the ALU together are known as the ____________________.

What are the four major subsystems of the Von Neumann architecture?

What is the most fundamental characteristic of the Von Neumann architecture?

MIMD parallelism is a scalable architecture._________________________

As computers become faster, memory access speeds are keeping pace.