Computer Architecture Essay

Question 1 (20 marks)

a) Describe the components of the instruction cycle. In this context, explain with justification the idea of interrupts and how interrupts are supported. (4 marks)

b) Compare the two system interconnection structures known as the bus and the central switch respectively. Explain what is meant by the statement that the central switch can “perform request buffering and arbitration”. (4 marks)

c) Outline the internal organization of the hard disk using the terms cylinder, head, track and sector. If a given hard disk is said to have 16384 cylinders and 16 heads what is its size in Gigabytes approximately. (4 marks)

d) Describe the typical 3-level hierarchical memory organization employed by many computer system and provide a convincing justification for its use. (4 marks)

e) In the context of the performance enhancement using parallelism, explain the terms available parallelism and utilized parallelism. Explain the possible role of the programming language and the hardware in enhancing utilized parallelism. (4 marks)

Question 2 (15 marks) a) The memory type known as EEPROM or Flash ROM has found application in main memory subsystem, I/O subsystem and mass storage subsystem. Explain the basic characteristics of flash ROM how it is applied in these three subsystems. (5 marks)

b) Describe the memory organization known as memory interleaving. Provide a convincing argument that its use does indeed results in memory performance enhancement. (5 marks)

c) In the context of a memory subsystems employing caching, explain the term replacement policy highlighting its effect on cached memory performance. Explain why LRU is considered the preferred replacement policy but also comment on its implementation challenges. (5 marks)

Question 3 (15 marks)

a) Using the standard