Computer Abstractions and Technology

Which class of computer is described as being the largest, spanning the widest range of applications and performance, and designed to run one specific application or a related set of them?

What concept refers to large collections of servers, often housed in Warehouse Scale Computers (WSCs), that provide services over the Internet, allowing companies to rent computing resources?

Which of the 'Eight Great Ideas in Computer Architecture' involves inventing techniques to make designers more productive by hiding lower-level details to offer a simpler model at higher levels?

In the software hierarchy, what is the primary role of a compiler?

What is the collective term for the five classic components of a computer: input, output, memory, datapath, and control?

Which component of the processor is responsible for performing the arithmetic operations?

What is the key characteristic of volatile memory, such as DRAM?

In the chip manufacturing process, what is the term for the percentage of good dies from the total number of dies on the wafer?

When measuring computer performance, what does CPU execution time (or CPU time) represent?

If computer A runs a program in 10 seconds and computer B runs the same program in 15 seconds, how much faster is computer A than computer B?

What is the primary source of dynamic energy consumption in CMOS integrated circuits?

The dynamic energy of a transistor transition is proportional to the capacitive load multiplied by what other factor?

What is the term for a microprocessor that contains multiple processors (or 'cores') in a single integrated circuit?

What is the purpose of a benchmark suite like SPEC CPU2006?

Amdahl's Law states that the performance enhancement possible with a given improvement is limited by what?

What does the acronym MIPS stand for in the context of computer performance metrics?

A computer has an instruction count of 10 billion for a program and a clock rate of 4 GHz. If the CPI for the program is 1.0, what is the MIPS rating for the program on this computer?

Which component is NOT considered one of the five classic components of a computer's organization?

What is the name for the abstract interface between the hardware and the lowest-level software, which includes all information necessary to write a correct machine language program?

According to the table 'The 2X vs. 10Y bytes ambiguity', what is the binary term for 10 to the power of 9 bytes, and how much larger is its corresponding binary value (2 to the power of 30)?

What is the relationship between clock cycle time and clock rate?

Which of the following best describes the historical trend of uniprocessor performance improvement since 2002, as shown in the textbook?

What is the primary reason that parallel programming is considered difficult?

According to the fallacy discussed in Section 1.10, what is a common misconception about the power usage of computers?

Two implementations of the same instruction set are being compared. Computer A has a clock cycle time of 250 ps and a CPI of 2.0. Computer B has a clock cycle time of 500 ps and a CPI of 1.2. Which computer is faster and by how much?

What material, found in sand, is the foundation for manufacturing integrated circuits because it is a semiconductor?

Which of the 'Eight Great Ideas' is demonstrated by using a small, fast cache memory to create the illusion of a large, fast main memory?

What is the primary difference between Static RAM (SRAM) and Dynamic RAM (DRAM)?

In the context of the CPU performance equation, what does CPI stand for?

A program executes 5 instructions. Instruction class A takes 1 cycle, class B takes 2 cycles, and class C takes 3 cycles. If the program has 2 class A instructions, 1 class B instruction, and 2 class C instructions, what is the total number of CPU clock cycles?

The classic CPU performance equation is CPU time = Instruction count * CPI * Clock cycle time. Which of these three factors is most affected by the algorithm chosen for a program?

In the post-PC era, what is the term for small, battery-operated, wireless devices like smartphones and tablets, on which users install software by downloading 'apps'?

What does Software as a Service (SaaS) deliver over the Internet?

What is the smallest individual picture element that makes up the image on a graphics display?

Which of the following describes main memory (or primary memory)?

Why must programmers in the multicore era rewrite their programs to take advantage of multiple processors?

The SPECINTC2006 summary measurement is obtained by taking what of the individual SPECratios?

What type of network, typically based on optical fibers and leased from telecommunication companies, is used to cross continents and forms the backbone of the Internet?

According to the cost equation for an integrated circuit, the cost per die is the cost per wafer divided by the product of what two factors?

If a computer's performance is 4 times as fast as computer B, and computer B runs an application in 28 seconds, how long will computer C take to run the same application?

Which historical computer, built at the University of Pennsylvania, is widely accepted as the world's first operational electronic, general-purpose computer?

The introduction of the IBM System/360 in 1964 was a landmark commercial success that moved which architectural idea into commercial reality?

What is the key idea behind the 'stored-program concept'?

In a display using 8 bits for each of the three primary colors (red, green, blue) per pixel with a frame size of 1280 by 1024, what is the minimum size in bytes of the frame buffer?

What is the primary trade-off that designers face, leading to the use of distinct instruction formats like R-type and I-type?

If a processor has a clock rate of 3 GHz and a CPI of 1.5 for a program, what is its performance expressed in instructions per second?

Which 'Great Idea' is exemplified by a 'bucket brigade' at a fire, where people form a human chain to pass water buckets, overlapping the stages of the task?

What does the term 'binary digit' or 'bit' represent in a computer?

A given application written in Java runs in 15 seconds. A new compiler requires only 0.6 times as many instructions but increases the CPI by 1.1. How fast will the application run with the new compiler?

What is an 'acronym' as defined in the context of computer terminology?