7 - IT Computing Questions

(1) When data is input into a computer, it is nearly always manipulated and stored in some standard data format. Why is the use of standard data formats essential, or indeed, crucial to successful data processing? Information technology (IT) systems are considered to consist of four major components. What are the four components of an IT system? Briefly, describe each.

(2) What is a register? Be exact.

(3) Define a "bus"? What is the purpose of a bus? What three types of data might a bus carry?

(4) How does pipelining improve the efficiency of a CPU? What is the potential effect of executing a conditional branch instruction on the efficiency gained by pipelining? What technique(s) can be employed to make pipelining more efficient when executing conditional branch instructions?

(5) Carefully describe the advantages and disadvantages of master-slave multiprocessing and symmetrical multiprocessing. Which would you select for fault-tolerant computing? Why?

(6)

Consider the following register and memory values:

PC is the Program Counter, BR is a Base Register, X is an Index Register, AC is the Accumulator.

a. Compute the result of an ADD IMMEDIATE 150 instruction.
b. Compute the result of an ADD DIRECT 150 instruction.
c. Compute the result of an ADD INDIRECT 150 instruction.
d. Compute the result of an ADD REGISTER 2 DIRECT instruction.
e. Compute the result of an ADD REGISTER 2 INDIRECT instruction.
f. Compute the result of an ADD BASE REGISTER 6 instruction.

(7)

Describe the trade-offs between the memory cache write-through and write-back techniques.