Multiple Choice Questions and Answers:-

1) A collection of lines that connects several devices is called .............. 

 A. bus 
 B. peripheral connection wires 
 C. Both a and b 
 D. internal wires 

Answer: A. bus

2) A complete microcomputer system consist of ........... 

 A. microprocessor 
 B. memory 
 C. peripheral equipment 
 D. all of the above 

Answer: D. all of the above 

3) PC Program Counter is also called ................... 

 A. instruction pointer 
 B. memory pointer 
 C. data counter 
 D. file pointer 

Answer: A. instruction pointer 

4) In a single byte how many bits will be there? 

 A. 8 
 B. 16 
 C. 4 
 D. 32 

Answer: A. 8 

5) CPU does not perform the operation .................. 

 A. data transfer 
 B. logic operation 
 C. arithmetic operation 
 D. all of the above 

Answer: A. data transfer 

6) The access time of memory is ............... the time required for performing any single CPU operation. 

 A. Longer than 
 B. Shorter than 
 C. Negligible than 
 D. Same as 

Answer: A. Longer than 

7) Memory address refers to the successive memory words and the machine is called as ............ 

 A. word addressable 
 B. byte addressable 
 C. bit addressable 
 D. Terra byte addressable

Answer: A. word addressable 

8) A microprogram written as string of 0's and 1's is a ............. 

 A. Symbolic microinstruction 
 B. binary microinstruction 
 C. symbolic microinstruction 
 D. binary micro-program  

Answer: D. binary micro-program  

9) A pipeline is like .................... 

 A. an automobile assembly line 
 B. house pipeline 
 C. both a and b 
 D. a gas line  

Answer: A. an automobile assembly line 

10) Data hazards occur when ..................... 

 A. Greater performance loss
 B. Pipeline changes the order of read/write access to operands
 C. Some functional unit is not fully pipelined
 D. Machine size is limited  

Answer: B. Pipeline changes the order of read/write access to operands

11) Processors of all computers, whether micro, mini or mainframe must have

 A. ALU
 B. Primary Storage
 C. Control unit
 D. All of above  

Answer: D. All of above  

12) What is the control unit's function in the CPU? 

 A. To transfer data to primary storage
 B. to store program instruction
 C. to perform logic operations
 D. to decode program instruction  

Answer: D. to decode program instruction  

13) What is meant by a dedicated computer?

 A. which is used by one person only
 B. which is assigned to one and only one task
 C. which does one kind of software
 D. which is meant for application software only  

Answer: B. which is assigned to one and only one task

14) The most common addressing techiniques employed by a CPU is

 A. immediate
 B. direct
 C. indirect
 D. register
 E. all of the above  

Answer: E. all of the above  

15) Pipeline implement

 A. fetch instruction
 B. decode instruction
 C. fetch operand
 D. calculate operand
 E. execute instruction
 F. all of abve  

Answer: F. all of abve  

16) Which of the following code is used in present day computing was developed by IBM corporation?

 A. ASCII
 B. Hollerith Code
 C. Baudot code
 D. EBCDIC code  

Answer: D. EBCDIC code  

17) When a subroutine is called, the address of the instruction following the CALL instructions stored in/on the

 A. stack pointer
 B. accumulator
 C. program counter
 D. Stack   

Answer: D. Stack   

18) A microprogram written as string of 0's and 1's is a

 A. symbolic microinstruction
 B. binary microinstruction
 C. symbolic microprogram
 D. binary microprogram  

Answer: D. binary microprogram  

19) Interrupts which are initiated by  an instruction are

 A. internal
 B. external
 C. hardware
 D. Software  

Answer: B. external

20) Memory access in RISC architecture is limited to instructions

 A. CALL and RET
 B. PUSH and POP
 C. STA and LDA
 D. MOV and JMP  

Answer: C. STA and LDA

21) From where interrupts are generated?

 A) Central processing unit
 B) Memory chips
 C) Registers
 D) I/O devices  

Answer: D) I/O devices  

22) The output of a gate is low when at least one of its input is low . It is true for 

 A) AND gate
 B) OR gate
 C) NAND gate
 D) NOR gate  

Answer: A)AND gate

23) Which one of the following is most suitable to make a parity checker

 A) AND gate
 B) OR gate
 C) Exclusive- OR gate
 D) None of the above  

Answer: C) Exclusive- OR gate

24) What is the minimum number of flip-flops required in a counter to count 100 pulses?

 A) Five
 B) seven
 C) Ten
 D) hundred  

Answer: B) seven

25. For a RS flip-flop constructed with NAND gates and input R=1 and s=1 the state is

 A) Memory state
 B) Set state
 C) Reset state
 D) Unused state  

Answer: D) Unused state  

26. The advantage of RISC processor over CISC processor is that

 A) The hardware architecture is simpler
 B) An instruction can be executed  in one cycle
 C) Less number of registers accommodate in chip
 D) Parallel execution capabilities  

Answer: B) An instruction can be executed  in one cycle

27. Which of the following is true about interrupts?

 A) They are generated when memory cycles are stolen
 B) They are  used in place of data channels
 C) They can be generated by arithmetic operation
 D) They can indicate completion of an I/O operation  

Answer: A) They are generated when memory cycles are stolen

28. Te devices connected to a microprocessor can use the data bus:

 A) all the time 
 B) at regular interval of time
 C) only when it’s sending or receiving data
 D) when the microprocessor is reset  

Answer: C) only when it’s sending or receiving data

29. Intel 8080 microprocessor has an instruction set of 91 instruction. The opcode to implement this instruction set should  be at least

 A) 3 bit long
 B) 5 bit long
 C) 7 bit long
 D) 9 bit long  

Answer: C) 7 bit long

30. Dynamic RAMs are best suited to

 A) slow system
 B) large system
 C) one bit system
 D) none of the above  

Answer: A) slow system

31. Intel Pentium CPU is a

 A. RISC based
 B. CISC based
 C. Both of the above
 D. None of the above

Answer: A. RISC based

32. A modem is used to link up two computers via

 A. telephone line
 B. dedicated line
 C. Both of the above
 D. None of the above

Answer: C. Both of the above

33. The maximum integer which can be stored on  a 8 bit accumulator is 
 A. 112
 B. 200
 C. 255
 D. 224

Answer: C. 255

34. In a system with a 16 bit address bus, what is the maximum number of 1K byte memory devices it could contain

 A. 16
 B. 64
 C. 256
 D. 65536  

Answer: C. 256

35. Which of the following memories in a computer is volatile?

 A. RAM
 B. ROM  
 C. EPROM
 D. ALL

Answer: A. RAM

36. A peripheral is

 A. any drives installed in the computer
 B. tapedrive connected to a computer
 C. any physical device connected to the computer
 D. None of above

Answer: C. any physical device connected to the computer

37. How many bits do you think will be adequate to encode individual character in Devnagari script

 A. 12
 B. 16
 C. 64
 D. 10

Answer: D. 10

38. Which of the following bus is used to transfer data from main memory to peripheral device?

 A. DMA bus
 B. Output bus
 C. Data bus
 D.All of the above

Answer: C. Data bus

39. To provide increased memory capacity for operating system, the

 A. virtual memory is created
 B. cache memory is increased
 C. memory for OS is reserved
 D. Additional memory is installed

Answer: A. virtual memory is created

40. CD -RAW is 

 A. Input device only
 B. output device only
 C. Both of the above
 D. None of the above   

Answer: B. output device only

41. Which of the following require large computer memory?

 A. Imaging
 B. Graphics
 C. Voice
 D. All of the above

Answer: D. All of the above

42. Which major development led to the production of microcomputers?

 A. Magnetic disks
 B. floppy disks
 C. Logic gates
 D. Integrated Circuits

Answer: D. Integrated Circuits

43. In immediate addressing the operand is placed

 A. in the CPU register
 B. after opcode in the instruction
 C. in the memory
 D. in the stack

Answer: B. after opcode in the instruction

44. Micro instructions are stored in 

 A. computer memory
 B. primary storage
 C. secondary storage
 D. control memory
 E. cache memory

Answer: D. control memory

45. Pipeline processing implement

 A. fetch instruction
 B. decode instruction
 C. fetch operand
 D. calculate operand
 E. execute instruction
 F. all of the above

Answer: F. all of the above

46. The 16- bit registers in 8085 is

 A. general purpose register
 B. accumulator
 C. stack pointer and program counter
 D. all of the above

Answer: C. stack pointer and program counter

47. Instruction pipelining has minimum stages

 A. 4
 B. 2
 C. 3
 D. 6

Answer: B. 2

48. Systems that do not have parallel processing capabilities are

 A. SISD
 B. SIMD
 C. MIMD
 D. All of the above

Answer: A. SISD

49. The word size of the microprocessor refers to

 A. the amount of a information that can be stored in a byte
 B. the amount of a information that can be stored in a cycle 
 C. The number of machine operations performed in a second
 D. the maximum length of an English word that can be input to a computer

Answer: B. the amount of a information that can be stored in a cycle 

50. How many address lines are needed to address each memory location in a 2048X 4 memory chip?

 A. 10
 B. 11
 C. 8
 D. 12   

Answer: B. 11

51. Who is regarded as the founder of Computer Architecture?

 A. Alan Turing
 B. Konrad Zuse
 C. John von Neumann
 D. John William Mauchly
 E. None of the answers above is correct   

Answer: C. John von Neumann

52. What is characteristic for the organization of a computer architecture?

 A. Size
 B. Dynamic behaviour
 C. Static behaviour
 D. Speed
 E. None of the answers above is correct

Answer: B. Dynamic behaviour

53. What is usually regarded as the von Neumann Bottleneck?

 A. Processor/memory interface
 B. Control unit
 C. Arithmetic logical unit
 D. Instruction set
 E. None of the answers above is correct

Answer: A. Processor/memory interface

54. How does the number of transistors per chip increase  according to Moore ´s law?

 A. Quadratically
 B. Linearly
 C. Cubicly
 D. Exponentially
 E. None of the answers above is correct

Answer: D. Exponentially

55. Who is regarded as the founder of Computer Science?

 A. Alan Turing
 B. Konrad Zuse
 C. J. Presper Eckert
 D. John William Mauchly
 E. None of the answers above is correct

Answer: A. Alan Turing

56. Which is the fastest storage unit in a usual memory  hierarchy?

 A. Cache
 B. Main memory
 C. Hard disk
 D. Register
 E. None of the answers above is correct

Answer: D. Register

57. Which cache miss does not occur in case of a fully associative cache ?

 A. Conflict miss
 B. Capacity miss
 C. Compulsory miss
 D. Cold start miss
 E. None of the answers above is correct

Answer: A. Conflict miss

58. Which miss even occurs in infinite caches?

 A. Coherence miss
 B. Capacity miss
 C. Conflict miss
 D. Cold start miss
 E. None of the answers above is correct

Answer: D. Cold start miss

59. What is stored in a Translation Lookaside Buffer?

 A. System dumps  
 B. Physical addresses
 C. rogram data
 D. Operating system log files
 E. None of the answers above is correct

Answer: B. Physical addresses

60. Which value has the speedup of a parallel program that  achieves an efficiency of 75% on 32 processors?

 A. 18
 B. 24
 C. 16
 D. 20   
 E. None of the answers above is correct  

Answer: B. 24

61. Pipelining strategy is called implement

 A. instruction execution
 B. instruction prefetch
 C. instruction decoding
 D. instruction manipulation     

Answer: B. instruction prefetch

62. The concept of pipelining is most effective in improving performance if the tasks being performed in different stages :

 A. require different amount of time
 B. require about the same amount of time
 C. require different amount of time with time difference between any two tasks being same
 D. require different amount with time difference between any two tasks being different

Answer: B. require about the same amount of time
  
63) Which Algorithm is better choice for pipelining?

 A. Small Algorithm
 B. Hash Algorithm
 C. Merge-Sort Algorithm
 D. Quick-Sort Algorithm

Answer: C. Merge-Sort Algorithm

64. The expression 'delayed load' is used in context of

 A. processor-printer communication
 B. memory-monitor communication
 C. pipelining
 D. none of the above

Answer: C. pipelining

65. Parallel processing may occur

 A. in the instruction stream
 B. in the data stream
 C. both[A] and [B]
 D. none of the above

Answer: C. both[A] and [B]

66. The cost of a parallel processing is primarily determined by :

 A. Time Complexity
 B. Switching Complexity
 C. Circuit Complexity
 D. None of the above

Answer: C. Circuit Complexity

67. An instruction to provide small delay in program

 A. LDA
 B. NOP
 C. BEA
 D. None of the above

Answer: B. NOP

68. Characteristic of RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) instruction set is  

 A. three instructions per cycle
 B. two instructions per cycle
 C. one instruction per cycle
 D. none of the     

Answer: C. one instruction per cycle

69. In daisy-chaining priority method, all the devices that can request an interrupt are connected in

 A. parallel
 B. serial
 C. random
 D. none of the above

Answer: B. serial
  
70. Which one of the following is a characteristic of CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer)

 A. Fixed format instructions
 B. Variable format instructions
 C. Instructions are executed by hardware
 D. None of the above     

Answer: B. Variable format instructions

71. During the execution of the instructions, a copy of the instructions is placed in the ______ .

 A. Register
 B. RAM
 C. System heap
 D. Cache  

Answer: D. Cache  

72. Two processors A and B have clock frequencies of 700 Mhz and 900 Mhz respectively. Suppose A can execute an instruction with an average of 3 steps and B can execute with an average of 5 steps. For the execution of the same instruction which processor is faster ?

 A. A 
 B. B 
 C. Both take the same time
 D. Insuffient information  

Answer: A. A 

73. A processor performing fetch or decoding of different instruction during the execution of another instruction is called ______ .

 A. Super-scaling
 B. Pipe-lining
 C. Parallel Computation
 D. None of these  

Answer: B. Pipe-lining

74. For a given FINITE number of instructions to be executed, which architecture of the processor provides for a faster execution ?

 A. ISA
 B. ANSA
 C. Super-scalar
 D. All of the above  

Answer: C. Super-scalar

75. The clock rate of the processor can be improved by,

 A. Improving the IC technology of the logic circuits
 B. Reducing the amount of processing done in one step
 C. By using overclocking method
 D. All of the above  

Answer: D. All of the above  

76. An optimizing Compiler does,

 A. Better compilation of the given piece of code.
 B. Takes advantage of the type of processor and reduces its process time.
 C. Does better memory managament.
 D. Both a and c  

Answer: B. Takes advantage of the type of processor and reduces its process time.

77. The ultimate goal of a compiler is to,

 A. Reduce the clock cycles for a programming task.
 B. Reduce the size of the object code.
 C. Be versatile.
 D. Be able to detect even the smallest of errors.  

Answer: A. Reduce the clock cycles for a programming task.

78. SPEC stands for,

 A. Standard Performance Evaluation Code.
 B. System Processing Enhancing Code.
 C. System Performance Evaluation Corporation.
 D. Standard Processing Enhancement Corporation.  

Answer: C. System Performance Evaluation Corporation.

79. As of 2000, the reference system to find the performance of a system is _____ . 

 A. Ultra SPARC 10
 B. SUN SPARC
 C. SUN II
 D. None of these  

Answer: A. Ultra SPARC 10

80. When Performing a looping operation, the instruction gets stored in the ______.
 
 A. Registers
 B. Cache
 C. System Heap
 D. System stack  

Answer: B. Cache

81. The average number of steps taken to execute the set of instructions can be made to be less than one by following _______ .

 A. ISA
 B. Pipe-lining
 C. Super-scaling
 D. Sequential  

Answer: C. Super-scaling

82. If a processor clock is rated as 1250 million cycles per second, then its clock period is ________ .

 A. 1.9 * 10 ^ -10 sec
 B. 1.6 * 10 ^ -9 sec
 C. 1.25 * 10 ^ -10 sec
 D. 8 * 10 ^ -10 sec   

Answer: D. 8 * 10 ^ -10 sec   

83. If the instruction, Add R1,R2,R3 is executed in a system which is pipe-lined, then the value of S is (Where S is term of the Basic performance equation)

 A. 3
 B. ~2
 C. ~1
 D. 6  

Answer: C. ~1

84. CISC stands for,

 A. Complete Instruction Sequential Compilation
 B. Computer Integrated Sequential Compiler
 C. Complex Instruction Set Computer
 D. Complex Instruction Sequential Compilation  

Answer: C. Complex Instruction Set Computer

85. As of 2000, the reference system to find the SPEC rating are built with _____ Processor.

 A. Intel Atom SParc 300Mhz
 B. Ultra SPARC -IIi 300MHZ
 C. Amd Neutrino series
 D. ASUS A series 450 Mhz

Answer: B. Ultra SPARC -IIi 300MHZ

86. The CISC stands for

 A. Computer Instruction Set Compliment
 B. Complete Instruction Set Compliment
 C. Computer Indexed Set Components
 D. Complex Instruction set computer  

Answer: D. Complex Instruction set computer  

87. The computer architecture aimed at reducing the time of execution of instructions is ________.

 A. CISC
 B. RISC 
 C. ISA
 D. ANNA  

Answer: B. RISC 

88. The Sun micro systems processors usually follow _____ architecture.

 A. CISC
 B. ISA
 C. ULTRA SPARC
 D. RISC  

Answer: D. RISC  

89. The RISC processor has a more complicated design than CISC.

 A. True
 B. False  

Answer: B. False  

90. The iconic feature of the RISC machine among the following are

 a) Reduced number of addressing modes
 b) Increased memory size
 c) Having a branch delay slot
 d) All of the above   

Answer: c) Having a branch delay slot

91. Both the CISC and RISC architectures have been developed to reduce the______.

 A. Cost
 B. Time delay
 C. Semantic gap
 D. All of the above  

Answer: C. Semantic gap

92. Out of the following which is not a CISC machine.

 A. IBM 370/168
 B. VAX 11/780
 C. Intel 80486
 D. Motorola A567  

Answer: D. Motorola A567  

93. Pipe-lining is a unique feature of _______.

 A. RISC
 B. CISC
 C. ISA
 D. IANA  

Answer: A. RISC

94. In CISC architecture most of the complex instructions are stored in _____.

 A. Register
 B. Diodes
 C. CMOS
 D. Transistors  

Answer: D. Transistors  

95. Which of the architecture is power efficient?

 A. CISC
 B. RISC
 C. ISA
 D. IANA 

Answer: B. RISC
  
96. To which class of systems does the von Neumann computer belong?

 A. SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data)
 B. MIMD (Multiple Instruction Multiple Data)
 C. MISD (Multiple Instruction Single Data)
 D. SISD (Single Instruction Single Data)
 E. None of the answers above is correct.

Answer: D. SISD (Single Instruction Single Data)

97. Parallel programs: Which speedup could be achieved according to Amdahl´s law for infinite number of processors if 5% of a program is sequential and the remaining part is ideally parallel?

 A. Infinite speedup
 B. 5
 C. 20
 D. 50
 E. None of the answers above is correct.  

Answer: C. 20

98. Itanium processor: Which hazard can be circumvented by register rotation?

 A. Control hazards
 B. Data hazards
 C. Structural hazards
 D. None
 E. None of the answers above is correct.

Answer: B. Data hazards

99. Which MIMD systems are best scalable with respect to the number of processors? 

 A. Distributed memory computers
 B. ccNUMA systems
 C. nccNUMA systems
 D. Symmetric multiprocessors
 E. None of the answers above is correct

Answer: A. Distributed memory computers

100. Cache coherence: For which shared (virtual) memory systems is the snooping protocol suited?

 A. Crossbar connected systems
 B. Systems with hypercube network
 C. Systems with butterfly network
 D. Bus based systems
 E. None of the answers above is correct.

Answer: D. Bus based systems