Spring 2019 EE380 Assignment 0 Sample Solution
For this question, check all that apply.
Which of the following five statements about current computer hardware is/are
true
?
The internet is a LAN
An optical mouse actually contains a high-speed camera
A typical PC processor now operates with a clock period of less than a nanosecond
An SSD should outlast a hard disk in an application that is continually rewriting data
One pixel in a digital camera generally is filtered to see red, green, or blue light, not all three
Here's one to look up in the history reference materials.... Which of the following folks is now generally credited with implementing the first floating-point arithmetic?
Bill Gates
Alan Turing
Konrad Zuse
John von Neumann
Grace Murray Hopper
In 1999, AMD's K7 (the original Athlon) contained about 22,000,000 transistors. Given that, about how many of those processors could fit on a chip using the state-of-the-art technologies that AMD used for their Epyc 7601 chip in 2017? (Hint: you can guess correctly based on knowing how many years were between the two parts being released.)
1
10
1,000
100,000
10,000,000
For this question, check all that apply.
Which of the following five choices
is/are
among the "eight great ideas" discussed in class and the text's first chapter?
Parallel processing
Optimizing for the common cases
Programming in high-level languages
Use of a state machine to implement control logic
Anticipating how computer technology will change over time
For this question, check all that apply.
Which of the following statements about how computer technology has been changing
over the last few decades
is/are
true
?
Main memory has been getting faster
Disk capacity has been getting larger
The number of transistors/chip is increasing
Computer logic designs have been getting simpler
Power consumption per transistor has been decreasing
Computer architecture is a field in which lifelong learning plays a critical role, in part because many aspects of computer architecture are
expected to change
in fundamental ways throughout your career. A key reason is found in how performance of different subsystems changes over time. Some years ago, computers often accessed instructions and data directly from main memory; briefly explain why computers now have a memory hierarchy.
Main memory speed used to be faster than processor arithmetic, now it's the other way around. Processor speed increases faster than memory speed. Need to hide memory access delays.
For this question, check all that apply.
Which of the following things
is/are
associated with an Instruction Set Architecture (ISA)?
Machine Code
Assembly Language
Processor clock frequency
High-level programming language
Number of clock cycles/instruction
What is meant by the phrase
multi-core processor
?
A processor chip that contains multiple processors/processing elements -- multiple cores.
Most cell phones now use a pouch battery that is permanently glued inside rather than an individually-packaged user-interchangeable battery. Broader impact refers to potential benefit, or harm, to society as a whole. Briefly
describe one negative broader impact
of consumer devices using permanently glued-in batteries and include a
URL for an article supporting your claim
:
Many possible answers here, including: * Shortened lifespan, thus more waste * More difficult recycling
Computer Organization and Design.