Questions and Answers of Computer Architecture

A waveform travels in space at a rate of approximately 300 million meters per second. The wavelength of a sine wave is the actual distance in space that is used by one sine wave as it travels. What
What is the carrier frequency of your favorite radio station? Is the station amplitude modulated or frequency modulated? How do you know? What is the bandwidth of this station? (what is the carrier
Consider a machine that performs calculations 4 bits at a time. Eight-bit 2’s complement numbers can be added by adding the four least significant bits, followed by the four most significant bits.
Most computers provide separate instructions for performing unsigned additions and complementary additions. Show that for unsigned additions, carry and overflow are the same. (Hint: Consider the
In 12’s complement base 12, how would you know if a number is positive or negative?
Given the positive number 2468, what is the largest positive digit that you can add that will not cause overflow in a four-digit decimal, 10’s complement number system?
Add the following two 12-bit binary 2’s complement numbers. Then, convert each number to decimal and check the results.a. 11001101101111010111011b.101011001100111111111100
The following decimal numbers are already in six-digit 10’s complementary form. Add the numbers. Convert each number and your result to sign and magnitude, and confirm your results.a.
Subtract the second number from the first by taking the six-digit 10’s complement of the second number and adding. Convert the result back to sign and magnitude if necessary.a.
Add the following decimal numbers by converting each to five-digit 10’s complementary form, adding, and converting back to sign and magnitude.a.24379 5098b.24379−5098c.−24379
Convert the decimal number −19575 to a 15-bit 2’s complement binary number. What happens when you perform this conversion? After the conversion is complete, what values (base 2 and base 10) does
Data is stored in the R4–D4 computer using eight-digit base 4 notation. Negative numbers are stored using 4’s complement.a. What is the sign-and-magnitude value of the following 4’s complement
a. Find the 16-bit 2’s complementary binary representation for the decimal number 1987.b. Find the 16-bit 2’s complementary binary representation for the decimal number −1987.c. From your
Data was stored in the Digital PDP-9 computer using six-digit octal notation. Negative numbers were stored in 8’s complement form.a. How many bits does six-digit octal represent? Show that 8’s
Using the Web as a resource, create a table that compares the features and capabilities of .PNG, .GIF, and .JPEG.
Use the Web as a resource to study the PDF format.a. Describe how PDF provides output that is consistent across different types of devices, including printers and monitors of various resolutions.b.
The MP3 audio format is described as “almost CD quality”. What characteristic of MP3 makes this description accurate?
Use the Web as a resource to investigate MPEG-2 [or MPEG-4]. Explain the data compression algorithm used by MPEG-2 [or MPEG-4].
Unicode is downward compatible with the Latin-1 version of 8-bit ASCII in the sense that a Unicode text file that is limited to the Latin-1 character set will be read correctly on a system that does
Provide a line-by-line explanation for the PostScript code in Figure 4.14.Figure 4.14 % procedure to draw pie slice %arguments graylevel, start angle, finish angle /wedge { 0 0 moveto setgray langlel
If you have studied COBOL, discuss the difference between numeric characters and numbers in the context of a COBOL program. Does COBOL distinguish clearly between the two? If so, in what ways?
Write a procedure similar to procedure Convert that converts a signed integer to a character string for output.
Write a program that accepts one of the seven values “MON”, “TUE”, “WED”, “THU”, “FRI”, “SAT”, and “SUN” as input and sets a variable named TODAY to the correct value of
Suppose you have a program that reads an integer, followed by a character, using the following prompt and READ statement:WRITE(Enter an integer and a character ∶READ (intval, charval);When you run
The average latency on a disk with 2200 sectors is found experimentally to be 110 msec.a. What is the rotating speed of the disk?b. What is the transfer time for one sector?
Old-fashioned twelve-inch laser video disks were produced in two different formats, known as CAV and CLV. The playing time of a CLV disk is approximately twice that of a CAV disk, although the number
A disk consists of two thousand concentric tracks. The disk is 5.2 inches in diameter. The innermost track is located at a radius of 1/2 inch from the center. The outermost track is located 2 1/2
Why is the average seek time for a hard disk much shorter than for a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM?
There is a current proposal to cut the size of an individual bit in a DVD-ROM in half so as to increase the capacity of the disk. This would cut both the width of the track and the track length
Atypical published page consists of approximately forty lines at seventy-five characters per line. How many published pages of 16-bit Unicode text would fit on a typical 600MB CD-ROM? How many
A high-quality photographic image requires 3 bytes per pixel to produce sixteen million shades of color.a. How large a video memory is required to store a 640 × 480 image during display? A 1600 ×
A 1024 × 768 image is displayed, non-interlaced, at a rate of thirty frames per second.a. If the image is stored with 64K-color resolution, which uses 2 bytes per pixel, how much memory is required
The cost of a monitor increases rapidly with increasing bandwidth. The bandwidth of a monitor is measured roughly as the number of pixels displayed on the screen per second. Calculate the bandwidth
A 1600-pixel by 900-pixel display is generated on a 14-inch (diagonal) monitor.a. How many dots per inch are displayed on this monitor?b. What is the size of an individual pixel? Would a 0.26mm pixel
What is the actual resolution of a gray scale picture printed on a 600-dot-per-inch laser printer if the gray scale is created with a 3 × 3 matrix?
In printer jargon, “replaceables” are the items that are used up as part of the printing process. What are the replaceables in a laser printer? In an inkjet printer?
Explain the difference in the method used to generate characters between graphics mode and character mode display.
Explain the difference between pixel graphics and object graphics, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each when being displayed.
What are the limitations of typewriter-type (formed character) printers that caused them to fade from popularity?
Figure 11.8 shows that a typical computer system is interconnected with a number of different buses, both internal and external. The diagram includes multiple cache buses, an external CPU bus,
Carefully explain the purpose of a bus interface.
What are the trade-offs in using a serial bus versus a parallel bus to move data from one place to another?
As described in the text, the PCI-Express bus consists of thirty-two “lanes”. As of January, 2009, each lane is capable of a maximum data rate of 500MB per second. Lanes are allocated to a device
Why is a multilane PCI-Express bus not subject to the same problem of skew as an equivalent parallel bus?
How many PCI-Express lanes are required to support a 10 GB per second Ethernet card?
PCI-Express, SATA, USB, FireWire, and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) are all serial buses used to connect external devices to a computer system. Locate the specifications or descriptions of each type.
Discuss the major differences, advantages, and disadvantages between bus I/O and channel I/O.
Explain how the three primary conditions required for DMA described in Chapter 9 of the text are met by the I/O channel architecture.
Describe how you might use a cluster to provide fault-tolerant computing. Describe the trade-offs between your solution and a single multiprocessor-based computer system solution.
Describe how you might use a cluster architecture to provide rapid scalability for a Web-based company experiencing rapid growth.
Obtain information and compare the features, capabilities, performance, and operational methods between Windows Server, Linux, and IBM zSeries clustering techniques.
Clearly and carefully discuss each of the advantages of clustering.
How does a Beowulf cluster differ from other types of clusters?
Clusters and networks are both categorized as loosely coupled systems, but they serve different purposes. Explain the differences in purpose between clusters and networks.
Discuss the trade-offs between circuit switching, packet switching, and virtual circuit switching.
Explain the differences between circuit switching and virtual circuit switching. What are the advantages of one over the other?
Explain the differences between virtual circuits and packet switching.
Consider the e-business system of a large automobile manufacturer such as Ford. List at least a dozen mission-critical ways that this system would be used to communicate between its various
A short-circuit failure is a failure in which the connection point signal line is electrically shorted to ground. Although NIC short-circuit failures are extremely rare, they do occur occasionally.
Suppose that you are trying to design a network that would be suitable for a company that is located in several buildings scattered around a town. No building is more than a 1/4 mile from another
a. Suppose you own a widespread chain of turkey tartare and sushi fast-food joints. Your tores are scattered all over the mainland United States and Canada. There are also a few stores in Western
Your cousin has asked you to help her to design a small home network for her own use.a. What are the important questions that you will need to ask as you start to consider your design?b. What are the
Draw a six-node full mesh network. How many connections did your drawing require? Does this agree with the formula in the text? (If not, fix your drawing!) How many connections would a fifty-node
A few years ago there was a major conflict between Comcast and Level 3, two major Internet backbone vendors. A Google search of the Web (try “internet backbone dispute”) will bring up the story.
Name at least four different application layer protocols other than HTTP. For each, describe the purpose of the protocol, and give a brief overview of the methodology of its operation.
The DNS database is described as “a directory system of servers”. Based upon your understanding of DNS from the text, explain the meaning of this description.
Explain the purpose of an authoritative domain name server. How does its purpose differ from that of a local DNS server.
What service is provided by a DNS root server? To whom is this service provided?
How does someone obtain a URL?
Explain the technique that is used by DNS to distribute the load of large websites.
Explain carefully the purpose and use of the sequence number and acknowledgment number in connection-oriented communications. Create a multi packet example that illustrates exactly how these packets
Why does the IP datagram require separate fields for the header length and the total datagram length, instead of combining both into a single value?
What is the purpose of an IP address mask?Suppose an IP address is identified as 222.44.66.88/24. What is the network address in this case? What is the host address? How many hosts can this network
Explain the concept of a DHCP lease. How is it obtained? How is it used? What does it provide?
Explain the operation of the Address Resolution Protocol.
The chapter notes that the physical layer is only concerned with the transmission of a sequence of bits from one point to another. Suppose that the sequence 110010011 is used as a synchronization
Prior to the invention of Ethernet, researchers at the University of Hawaii proposed a broadcast radio network called ALOHANet as a means to provide wireless links between the Hawaiian islands. Each
Discuss the trade-offs between bus-based and switched Ethernet. State the various conditions under which one or the other would be preferred and explain why.
Before effective Ethernet switching existed, some network designers used an alternative bus collision avoidance protocol known as the token bus protocol. With the token bus protocol, a “token”
The governments of Freedonia and Sylvania need to set up data communications to prevent the possibility of war. Discuss the security implications of fiber optic versus coaxial wire versus satellite
Explain the differences between TCP and UDP in the context of ordering a number of items from an online seller such as amazon.com.
In the text, we identify four different “addresses” that are normally used during the passage of a message from source to destination using TCP/IP and Ethernet. These include a
What are the specific so-called “qualities” that quality of service attempts to measure and achieve? Describe the two methods that are normally used as an attempt to achieve this quality.
Explain the purpose of non-repudiation. How does non-repudiation differ from authentication? Create a business scenario that illustrates the importance of each.
Packages and high-priority mail are handled by The Typical Large Corporation (TyplCorp) in a way that is typical of large corporations. Each company building has a centralized mailroom where packages
Describe clearly, step-by-step, and layer-by-layer, the operation that takes place when passing a datagram through an intermediate node in a switching network.
Is it possible to build a network that can simultaneously recognize more than one protocol suite? If so, explain how this could be done.
The TCP/IP protocol suite appears to have no equivalents to the OSI session and presentation layers. How are the services provided by those layers handled in TCP/IP? Be as specific as you can when
Each of the input and output ports on a router has a separate physical address. Why is this an important requirement for the operation of a router in a network?
Explain the relationship between corresponding layers at the source and destination nodes of a TCP/IP communication connection.
Locate and read the proposed standard and test report for the “IP over Avian Carrier” proposed standard. Explain how this proposed standard fulfills the requirements of the TCP/IP model.
Locate protocol information for the IBM System Network Architecture (SNA) model. Compare the operation of SNA with that of TCP/IP.
Locate, download, and install a packet-sniffing software package, such as WireShark. Experiment with this software until you understand how it works and the range of its capabilities. Write a brief
As an alternative alphanumeric code, consider a code where punched holes in the columns of a card represent alphanumeric codes. The punched hole represents a €œ1€; all other bits
ASCII, Unicode, and EBCDIC are, of course, not the only possible codes. The Sophomites from the planet Collegium use the rather strange codeshownin Figure E4.1. There are only thirteen characters in
What character string does the binary ASCII code1010100 1101000 1101001 1110011 0100000 1101001 11100110100000 1000101 1000001 1010011 1011001 0100001represent?
a. What is the ASCII representation for the numeral −3.1415 in binary? in octal? in hexadecimal? in decimal?b. What is the EBCDIC representation for the numeral +1,250.1? (Include the comma.)
a. Create a table that shows the ASCII and EBCDIC representations side-by-side for each of the uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and numerals.b. Does the hexadecimal representation show you a
Write a computer program in a language appropriate for you that converts mixed numbers between decimal and binary in both directions.
What is the decimal value of the following binary numbers?a. 1100101.1b. 1110010.11c. 11100101.1

Showing 1200 - 1300 of 1390