WESTERN GOVERNORS UNIVERSITY
COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE |
COMPREHENSIVE OBJECTIVE
ASSESSMENT STUDY GUIDE 2026 |
GRADED A+ | GUARANTEED SUCCESS
Updated 2026 Questions and Answers | 100% Verified
Exam Prep and Comprehensive Rationales Included
,Cloud computing refers to large collections of servers that provide services over the internet; some
providers rent dynamically varying numbers of servers as a utility
Software as a Service (SaaS) delivers software and data as a service over the internet, usually via a thin
program such as a browser that runs on local client devices, instead of binary
code that must be installed, and runs wholly on that device. Examples include
web search and social networking
Acronym A word constructed by taking the initial letters of a string of words. For example:
RAM is an acronym for Random Access Memory, and CPU is an acronym for
Central Processing Unit
Terabyte(TB) Originally 1,099,511,627,776(2^40) bytes, although communications and secondary
storage systems developers started using the term to mean
1,000,000,000,000(10^12) bytes. To reduce confusion, we now use the term
tebibyte(TiB) for 2^40 bytes
Moore's Law States that integrated circuit resources double every 18-24 months
Abstraction to Simplify Design Used to characterize the design at different levels of representation; lower-level
details are hidden to offer a simpler model at higher levels
Common Case Fast Will tend to enhance performance better than optimizing the rare case.
Performance via parallelism Since the dawn of computing, computer architects have offered designs that get
more performance by computer operations in parallel
Pipelining Moves multiple operations through hardware units that each do a piece of an
operation, akin to water flowing through a pipeline
Prediction In some cases it can be faster on average to guess the start working rather than
wait until you know for sure, assuming that the mechanism to recover from a
misprediction is not too expensive and your prediction is relatively accurate.
Hierarchy of Memories This is used to address conflicting demands of fast, large, and cheap memory with
the fastest, smallest, and most expensive memory per bit at the top of the
hierarchy and the slowest, largest, and cheapest per bit at the bottom.
Dependability via Redundancy We make systems Dependable by including redundant components that can take
over when a failure occurs.
, System Software Software that provides services that are commonly useful, including operating
systems, compilers, loaders, and assemblers
Operating system Supervising program that manages the resources of a computer for the benefit of
the programs that run on that computer
Compiler A program that translates high-level language statements into assembly language
statements
Instruction A command that computer hardware understands and obeys
Assembler A program that translates a symbolic version of instructions into the binary version
High-level programming language A portable language such as C, C++, Java, or Visual Basic that is composed of
words and algebraic notation that can be translated by a compiler into assembly
language
Input device A mechanism through which the computer is fed information, such as a keyboard
Output device A mechanism that conveys the result of a computation to a user, such as a display,
or to another computer
Liquid crystal display A display technology using a thin layer of liquid polymers that can be used to
transmit or block light according to whether a change is applied
Active matrix display A liquid crystal display using a transistor to control the transmission of light at
each individual pixel
pixel The smallest individual picture element. Screens are composed of hundreds of
thousands to millions of pixels, organized in a matrix
Integrated circuit Also called a chip. A device combining dozens to millions of transistors
COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE |
COMPREHENSIVE OBJECTIVE
ASSESSMENT STUDY GUIDE 2026 |
GRADED A+ | GUARANTEED SUCCESS
Updated 2026 Questions and Answers | 100% Verified
Exam Prep and Comprehensive Rationales Included
,Cloud computing refers to large collections of servers that provide services over the internet; some
providers rent dynamically varying numbers of servers as a utility
Software as a Service (SaaS) delivers software and data as a service over the internet, usually via a thin
program such as a browser that runs on local client devices, instead of binary
code that must be installed, and runs wholly on that device. Examples include
web search and social networking
Acronym A word constructed by taking the initial letters of a string of words. For example:
RAM is an acronym for Random Access Memory, and CPU is an acronym for
Central Processing Unit
Terabyte(TB) Originally 1,099,511,627,776(2^40) bytes, although communications and secondary
storage systems developers started using the term to mean
1,000,000,000,000(10^12) bytes. To reduce confusion, we now use the term
tebibyte(TiB) for 2^40 bytes
Moore's Law States that integrated circuit resources double every 18-24 months
Abstraction to Simplify Design Used to characterize the design at different levels of representation; lower-level
details are hidden to offer a simpler model at higher levels
Common Case Fast Will tend to enhance performance better than optimizing the rare case.
Performance via parallelism Since the dawn of computing, computer architects have offered designs that get
more performance by computer operations in parallel
Pipelining Moves multiple operations through hardware units that each do a piece of an
operation, akin to water flowing through a pipeline
Prediction In some cases it can be faster on average to guess the start working rather than
wait until you know for sure, assuming that the mechanism to recover from a
misprediction is not too expensive and your prediction is relatively accurate.
Hierarchy of Memories This is used to address conflicting demands of fast, large, and cheap memory with
the fastest, smallest, and most expensive memory per bit at the top of the
hierarchy and the slowest, largest, and cheapest per bit at the bottom.
Dependability via Redundancy We make systems Dependable by including redundant components that can take
over when a failure occurs.
, System Software Software that provides services that are commonly useful, including operating
systems, compilers, loaders, and assemblers
Operating system Supervising program that manages the resources of a computer for the benefit of
the programs that run on that computer
Compiler A program that translates high-level language statements into assembly language
statements
Instruction A command that computer hardware understands and obeys
Assembler A program that translates a symbolic version of instructions into the binary version
High-level programming language A portable language such as C, C++, Java, or Visual Basic that is composed of
words and algebraic notation that can be translated by a compiler into assembly
language
Input device A mechanism through which the computer is fed information, such as a keyboard
Output device A mechanism that conveys the result of a computation to a user, such as a display,
or to another computer
Liquid crystal display A display technology using a thin layer of liquid polymers that can be used to
transmit or block light according to whether a change is applied
Active matrix display A liquid crystal display using a transistor to control the transmission of light at
each individual pixel
pixel The smallest individual picture element. Screens are composed of hundreds of
thousands to millions of pixels, organized in a matrix
Integrated circuit Also called a chip. A device combining dozens to millions of transistors
