EXCEL COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING FOR WOMEN PALLAKKAPALAYAM

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

COMPUTER ORGANIZATION AND ARCHITECTURE - QUESTION BANK

PREPARED BY

UNIT-I PART-A 1. Define Computer Architecture 2. What are the functional units of a computer? 3. What is meant by instruction? 4. What is meant by object program? 5. Define memory access time 6. What is the use of buffer register? 7. Define system software 8. Define Application Program 9. What is meant by multiprogramming? 10. Specify the basic performance equation of a computer system 11. Define Pipelining 12. What are the different addressing modes? 13. What are the two types of ALU? 14. Distinguish between hardware and firmware 15. List the various instruction formats 16. Specify the differences between CISC and RISC 17. Define a normalized number 18. Give the IEEE standard for floating point numbers for single precision model 19. What is excess-127 format? 20. Differentiate overflow and underflow

PART-B 1. What are the various types of Instruction Set Architecture (ISAs) possible? 2. Discuss the various issues to be considered while designing the ISA of a processor 3. Explain the different addressing modes with an example. 4. Give the different instruction formats of a CPU in general 5. Define addressing mode. Classify addressing modes and explain each type with an example 6. Explain the instruction set and instruction sequencing 7. Explain the representation of floating point number in detail 8. Explain the IEEE standard double precision floating point format 9. Explain the fixed point representation 10. How floating point addition is implemented. Explain briefly with neat diagram 11. Explain the steps involved in design of ALU 12. Explain the software interface in detail

UNIT-II PART-A 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. What are the basic operations performed by the processor? Define data path Define processor clock Define a) Latency b) Throughput What is meant by hardwired control? Define nanoprogramming What is nano control memory? What is meant by microprogrammed control? What are the advantages of hardwired control? Define micro instruction What are the advantages and disadvantages of microprogramming What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of microprogrammed control over hardwired control? What is nano instruction? What is control store? What are the advantages of multiple bus organization over single bus organization? What is microroutine?

PART-B 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Draw and explain typical hardwired control unit Draw and explain the microprogrammed control unit Draw and explain the modified three-bus structure of the processor suitable for four-stage pipelined execution. How this structure is suitable to provide four-stage pipelined execution Compare hardwired control unit and microprogrammed control unit Explain multiple bus organization in detail Explain Nanoprogramming and Nanoprogram control

UNIT-III

PART-A 1. What is pipelining? 2. What are the major characteristics of a pipeline? 3. What are the various stages in a pipeline execution? 4. What are the types of pipeline hazards? 5. Define structural hazard 6. Define data hazard 7. Define control hazard 8. List the types of data hazards 9. List the techniques used for overcoming hazard 10. What is instruction level parallelism? 11. What are the types of dependences? 12. What is delayed branching? 13. Define deadlock 14. Define stall 15. What is branch prediction? 16. List the various pipelined processors PART-B 1. Explain the different types of hazards that can occur in a pipeline 2. Explain the basic concepts of pipelining and compare it with sequential processing. Draw needed diagrams 3. What is branch hazard? Describe the methods for dealing with branch hazard 4. What is data hazard? Describe the methods for dealing with branch hazard 5. Explain the influence on instruction sets

UNIT-IV

PART-A 1. Define memory cycle time 2. What is virtual memory? 3. Define set associative cache 4. How a block can be identified in the memory? 5. What is meant by block replacement? 6. Name the strategies used for cache write 7. Give some methods to reduce cache miss penalty 8. What is memory interleaving? 9. What is TLB? 10. Write the differences between cache and virtual memory 11. Give classification of memory 12. Define Random Access Memory 13. What are PROMs? 14. What is DVD? 15. Give the features of a ROM cell 16. List the difference between static RAM and dynamic RAM PART-B 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. With a neat diagram explain the internal organization of bit cells in a memory chip Discuss about the different types of ROM Define Cache memory. Explain any two mapping process following in cache memory What is virtual memory? Why is it necessary to implement virtual memory? Describe the organization of a typical RAM chip Explain the organization of magnetic disk in detail

UNIT-V PART-A 1. What are the types of buses? 2. Differentiate synchronous bus from asynchronous bus 3. What are the input/output data transfer methods using memory bus? Give the comparison between memory mapped i/o and input/output mapped i/o List down the arbitration schemes used in centralized bus arbitration approach What is DMA? List out the features of PCI bus List the features of USB List the types of data transfer used in USB Mention the group of lines in the system bus What is bus master and slave master What is bus arbitration? Define Privilege exception List the objectives of USB What is priority interrupt? What is the difference between a subroutine and an interrupt-service routine?

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PART-B 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Give comparison between memory mapped i/o and input/output mapped i/o List the different types of interrupts. Explain briefly about maskable interrupt Draw and explain typical block diagram of DMA Explain various data transfer modes used in DMA Explain SCSI bus standards Discuss the operation of any two input devices With a neat block diagram explain the IOP organization Discuss the DMA driven data transfer technique