Exam (elaborations)

WGU Computer Architecture verified

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Module
WGU C173

Institution
WGU C173

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Uploaded on July 1, 2024
Number of pages 27
Written in 2023/2024
Type Exam (elaborations)
Contains Questions & answers

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LectDan

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WGU Computer Architecture verified
Personal Computer(PC)
A computer designed for use by an individual, usually incorporating a graphics display, a keyboard,
and a mouse

Server
A computer used for running larger programs for multiple users, often simultaneously, and typically
accessed only via a network

Supercomputer
A class of computers with the highest performance and cost; they are configured as servers and
typically cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars

Embedded computer
A computer inside another device used for running one predetermined application or collection of
software.

Personal mobile devices(PMDs)
Are small wireless devices to connect to the internet; they rely on batteries for power, and software is
installed by downloading apps. Conventional examples are smart phones and tables

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

Central Processor unity(CPU)
Also called processor. The active part of the computer, which contains the datapath and control and
which adds numbers, tests numbers, signals I/O devices to activate, and so on

Datapath
The component of the processor that performs arithmetic operations

Control
The component of the processor that commands the datapath, memory, and I/O devices according to
the instructions of the program

Memory
The storage area in which programs are kept when they are running and that contains the data
needed by the running programs

Dynamic random access memeory(DRAM)
Memory built as an integrated circuit; it provides random access to any location. Access times are 50
nanoseconds and cost per gigabyte in 2012 was $5 to $10

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