What similarities exist among mechanical,
electrical, and optical methods of computation?
- What shortcomings of mechanical
computation did the introduction of electrical computing
devices address?
- What shortcomings of
electronic computation will optical
computing devices address?
- What is a CPU? What are its
primary components?
- What are registers? What
is/are their functions?
- What is main memory? How does it differ from registers?
- What are the differences
between primary and secondary storage?
- How does a workstation differ
from a PC?
- How does a supercomputer
differ from a mainframe computer?
- Describe three types of
multicomputer configurations. What are their comparative advantages and
disadvantages?
-
What is virtualization?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a single large computer
to host multiple virtual machines compared with using smaller computers
without virtualization?
-
What class of computer
systems are normally for servers?
-
What is Grosch's law? Does it
hold today? Why or why not?
-
How can a computer system be
tuned to a particular application?
-
What characteristics
differentiate application software from system software?
-
In what ways does system
software make the development of application software easier?
-
Why has the development of
system software paralleled the development of computer hardware?
-
List at least five types of
resources that computers on a local area or wide area
network can share.
-
Describe the dual roles most operating systems
play in external resource access.
-
Describe the relationship
between the resource allocation and management functions of system
software and external resources accessible via a network. What system
software functions must be provided to access external resources?
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