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Bbt 3102 - Computer Organization And Architecture Question Paper
Bbt 3102 - Computer Organization And Architecture
Course:Bachelor Of Business Information Technology
Institution: Strathmore University question papers
Exam Year:2011
Question 1
a) What are the typical elements of a machine instruction? 3 Marks
b) If an instruction contains four addresses, what might be the purpose of each address?
2 Marks
c) In instruction sets, we commonly come across the terms “big endian” and “little endian”.
Describe what these two terms mean, clearly outlining their difference. 3 Marks
d) What is a reentrant procedure? 1 Marks
e) Why is it necessary and more convenient to have memory addresses being numbered using
hexadecimal than decimal numbers? You may use an appropriate example to support your
response. 3 Marks
f)
i). Suppose that a data bus has 16 data lines and requires 4 cycles of 500 nsecs each to
transfer. What would be the bandwidth of this bus? 3 Marks
ii). What if the cycle time of the bus above is increased to 1 µsec, with the number of cycles
required remaining the same, what would be the new bandwidth for this bus? 3 Marks
iii).A computer’s memory is made up of 8K words of 32 bits each. How many bytes does
this memory contain? 2 Marks
Total: 20 Marks
Question 2
a) Describe the fetch-execution circle. 2 Marks
b) Over time, computers have evolved from simple uniprocessor systems to multiprocessor,
complex networked systems. In this new development there has been development of
terminology such as “load balancing”, “Instuction pipelining”, and”storage area
networks”.
Using the above narrative, answer the following questions:
i). What is the essence of multiprocessor systems (multicores)? 2 Marks
ii). What do load balancing, instruction pipelining, and storage area networks mean?
6 Marks
iii). Differentiate superscalar instruction pipelines from superpipelined instructions.
3 Marks
c) Some machines utilize what is popularly known as “register renaming”. What does this
mean and how better is it than using the conventional registers? 4 Marks
d) Justify the existence of cache memory in a computer’s processor. 3 Marks
Total: 20 Marks
Question 3
a) Briefly differentiate RISC machine from CISC machines. 4 Marks
b) What would you consider the most significant difference between the ISA and PCI buses
within the context of their use within computer hardware designed for desktop use? Briefly
explain why you think this change occurred. 6 Marks
c)
The computer is the only machine that is known to assign its processes/tasks time slices,
which means many processes are executed almost simultaneously. The computer is also
mostly adapted to react to external interference in the execution of its processing cycle. One
of these interferences occurs when data that is required in the CPU cannot be proximately
found and would have to be read from an external source. In this case, execution is
suspended, a phenomenon known as an interrupt.
i). Using an appropriate example, describe the concept of the CPU clock. 3 Marks
ii). Why are interrupts necessary? 3 Marks
iii).How does the CPU “know” that the data that was “missing” has been read and is ready,
so process execution can resume? 4 Marks
Total: 20 Marks
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