Exam Questions and CORRECT Answers
Computer Architecture - CORRECT ANSWER Encompasses those aspects of a computing
system that are visible or important to the programmer
Instruction set - CORRECT ANSWER Assembly language instructions that can be executed
by the processor
CPU registers - CORRECT ANSWER Storage within the processor; how many, names, sizes,
usage limitations
Data representation - CORRECT ANSWER Signed and unsigned integers, characters, real
numbers, etc; sizes
I/O - CORRECT ANSWER Memory mapped (devices accessed by reading and writing
memory), ports (special instructions)
Memory - CORRECT ANSWER How much, address space, segmentation, cache levels
Instruction addressing modes - CORRECT ANSWER Where does data come from and where
does it go when an instruction is executed
Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) - CORRECT ANSWER a specification of the underlying
computer architecture. Every type of microprocessor has its own ISA
Computer Organization - CORRECT ANSWER Encompasses how to design and build the
hardware to implement the architecture (architecture comes first)
, machine language - CORRECT ANSWER all instructions and data are encoded in binary
Assembler - CORRECT ANSWER Symbolic representation of instructions that maps directly
to the architecture and machine language of the processor
mnemonics - CORRECT ANSWER represents machine language instructions
situations that warrant assembly language - CORRECT ANSWER trying to optimize a piece
of code for speed or space purposes
what does processor executes? - CORRECT ANSWER binary machine language instructions
in machine language, how are all instructions and data encoded - CORRECT ANSWER in
binary
why do we prefer to use HLL - CORRECT ANSWER the programmer normally does not
need to understand the underlying instruction set architecture and HLL's are generally hardware-
independent
Storage devices - CORRECT ANSWER DRAM memory, hard drive, SSD
Datapath - CORRECT ANSWER Processor hardware components that manipulate bits to
execute instructions.
Control - CORRECT ANSWER Processor hardware components that coordinate the activities
taking place in the datapath as instructions are being executed.
Central Processing Unit (CPU) - CORRECT ANSWER datapath and control