Introduction of Computer Organization and Architecture: Important Questions

Computer Organization and Architecture

Chapter 1: Introduction

Important Questions

1. Explain different functional units of a digital computer.

2.What is a stored program concept? Explain the functional units of a stored program digital computer, along with a block diagram.

3. Draw block diagram of a basic processor.

4.What are the special registers in a typical computer? Explain their purposes in detail.

5. Define IR and MAR.

6. Define microcomputer. Give two examples and mention their main characteristics.

7. Differentiate between mainframe computers and supercomputers based on their functions and applications.

8. Explain the features and uses of minicomputers.

9. What are embedded systems? Give two examples from daily life.

10. Write a short note on workstations and servers. How are they different from personal computers?

11. Explain the concept of the Hardware Software Interface (HSI).

12. Describe the different layers of the Hardware ‒ Software Interface with their roles.

13. Write a note on the role and importance of the Hardware ‒ Software Interface.

14. List the type of operations supported by MIPS instruction set architecture.

15. Classify the instructions based on the operations they perform and give one example to each category.

16. Write a note on the operands of the computer hardware.

17. Explain the load instruction.

18. Explain the store instruction.

19. What do you mean by alignment restriction?

20. What do you mean by spilling registers?

21. Why are frequently used variables stored in registers ?

22. Write a note on Instruction Set Architecture (ISA).

23. What is the importance of ISA?

24. List the features of MIPS instruction set architecture

25. Define the acronyms CISC and RISC

26. What is the primary concept or goal each architecture is based on?

27. Compare and contrast CISC and RISC architectures.

28. What is the information conveyed by addressing modes?

29. Define addressing mode. Classify addressing modes and explain each type with examples.

30. Differentiate direct and indirect addressing mode.

31. Distinguish between autoincrement and autodecrement addressing mode.

32. Define addressing mode and explain the basic addressing modes with an example for each.

33. What are addressing modes? Explain the various addressing modes with examples.

34. Define addressing mode in a computer. What are the different MIPS addressing modes ? Give one example instruction to each category.

35. What do you mean by addressing modes? Explain the types of addressing modes that exists in modern processors ?

36. What is the need for addressing in a computer system? Explain the different addressing modes with suitable examples.

37. Elaborate the different types of addressing modes with a suitable example.

38. Explain direct, immediate, relative and indexed addressing modes with examples.

39. Explain in brief the issues involved in the design of an instruction format.

40. Explain the shift instructions supported by MIP with the help of suitable examples.

41. Explain the logical instructions supported by MIP with the help of suitable examples.

42. Explain the conditional branch instructions supported by MIP with the help of suitable examples.

43. Write a MIPS assembly language program to add two numbers and store the result in a register.

44. Write a program to subtract one number from another and store the result in memory.

45. Write a program to multiply two numbers using the mult and mflo instructions.

46. Write a program to find the sum of the first 10 natural numbers using a loop.

47. Write a program to calculate the factorial of a given number using iterative multiplication.

48. Write a MIPS program to compute X raised to the power N (Xn) using repeated multiplication.

49. Write a program to find the largest of three numbers stored in registers $s0, $s1, and $s2.

50. Write a MIPS program to check whether a number is even or odd using bitwise operations.

51. Write a program to find the absolute value of a number stored in $s0.

52. Write a program to compare two numbers and set a register to 1 if the first is greater, otherwise 0.

53. Write a program to find the largest element in an array.

54. Write a MIPS program to count the number of positive elements in an array.

55. Write a program to copy 10 elements from one array to another.

56. Write a MIPS program to reverse the elements of an array using a loop.

57. Write a program to count the number of even numbers in an array of integers.

58. Explain with an example how a high‒level language statement is translated step‒by‒step into assembly language and then into machine (binary) code.

59. What is performance?

60. Define response time and execution time.

61. What is user CPU time and system CPU time?

62. Explain the concept of relative performance with the help of example.

63. State the basic performance equation.

64. State the performance factors,

65. State the components that affects the factors in the CPU performance equation and reason behind it.

66. State the CPU performance equation and discuss the factors that affect performance.

67. Explain the important measures of the performance of a computer and derive the basic performance equation.

68. What is the purpose of the SPEC benchmarks?

69. Differentiate between CINT2006 and CFP2006 benchmark suites of SPEC

70. Define SPECratio and explain how it is used to compare computer systems.

71. Describe how the SPEC power benchmark measures the energy efficiency of a system.

72. Explain the need for introducing multicore processors.

73. Describe the working and benefits of a multicore processor.

74. Discuss the challenges faced in parallel programming.

75. Explain how the Hardware ‒ Software Interface supports parallelism.

76. What is cache coherence? Why is it important in multicore processors?

77. Differentiate between throughput and response time.

78. Explain subword parallelism.

79. What is RAID? How does it represent parallelism in I/O operations?

80. Describe the role of GPUs in parallel computing