Study Sheet - Chapter 2

Disclaimer: This study sheet covers important terms and concepts that I found in the text. The absence of a specific item in the text from this list does not mean that you are not responsible for knowing it. Yow!

1. Processors

Terms:

Central Processing Unit (CPU) Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) datapath datapath cycle
register Program Counter (PC) Instruction Register (IR)  
architecture Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC) MIPS processor
microinstructions control store, ROM pipelining stages
latency processor bandwidth superscalar architectures  
array processor vector processor multiprocessor multicomputer

You should understand:

  • the datapath in figure 2-2 on page 53
  • the fetch-decode-execute cycle
  • the 5 RISC design principles
  • hardware v. software (microinstructions) tradeoff
  • instruction-level pipelining v. processor-level pipelining
  • the basics of instruction-level pipelining
  • the myriad of processor-level parallelism options and their differences

2. Primary memory

Terms:

bit byte nibble  
Binary Coded Digit (BCD) cell address word
big endian little endian    
Hamming code codeword parity bit Hamming distance
cache locality principle cache line unified cache
split cache Single Inline Memory Module (SIMM) Double Inline Memory Module (DIMM)  

You should understand:

  • Memory size, address size, word size and their relationships
  • Hamming codes and the Hamming algorithm
  • The relationship between the locality principle and caching
  • Calculating the mean access time using a cache

3. Secondary memory

Terms:

track sector preamble inter-sector gap
Winchester disks cylinder seek/seek time rotational latency
disk controller Basic Input Output System (BIOS) Integrated Device Electronics (IDE, EIDE) serial ATA
Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) striping optical disk
pits lands frame sector
CD, CD-ROM, CD-RW Volume Table of Contents (VTOC) DVD Blu-ray

You should understand:

  • the memory hierarchy pyramid in Figure 2-18 on page 82
  • magnetic disk workings
  • basics of the 6 RAID levels
  • CD-ROM workings... a continuous spiral
  • compare and contrast magnetic disks, CD-ROMs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, DVDs

4. Input/output

Terms:

motherboard I/O controller Direct Memory Access (DMA) interrupt
interrupt controller bus arbiter cycle stealing Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus
Extended ISA (EISA) bus Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI)    
Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) raster scan device    
Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) passive matrix display active matrix display video RAM
color palette mickey halftoning Cyan Yellow Magenta Black (CYMK)
carrier baud rate bit rate  
full duplex half duplex simplex Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)
charge-coupled devices (CCD's) JPEG ASCII Unicode

You should understand:

  • 3 flavors of mice: mechanical, optical, opto-mechanical
  • 3 flavors of printer: matrix, inkjet, laser
  • Why is half-toning sometimes necessary?
  • How information is transmitted by a modem: amplitude mod, frequency mod, phase mod
  • ASCII and Unicode: compare and contrast