Exam 4: Processor Technology and Architecture

Electricity travels through a trace at approximately 70% of the speed of light.

List two examples of sequence control operations that alter the flow of instruction execution.

​Silicon and germanium are basic elements with resistance characteristics that can be controlled or enhanced with chemicals called ____.

Complex instructions are a tradeoff between processor complexity and program simplicity.

A(n) ____ instruction generates the value true if either or both data inputs are true.

____ has been the primary basis for CPU speed and clock rate improvement since the first electrical computer.

The earliest computers were constructed with ordinary copper wire and vacuum tube switches and were unreliable because of the heat the vacuum tubes generated.

During the ____ cycle of the CPU, the transformation takes place and data output is stored.

A(n) ____________________ consists of billions of electrical devices on a single chip.

A(n) ____________________ instruction transforms the Boolean value true (1) into false (0) and the value false into true.

The operand of a CPU instruction cannot contain the location of a data item.

Pipelining is a method of organizing CPU circuitry so that multiple instructions can be in different stages of execution at the same time.

A(n) ____________________ is a measure of CPU or computer system performance when carrying out one or more specific tasks.

The CPU alternates constantly between fetch and execution cycles.

The PC revolution wouldn't have been possible without standardized microprocessors.

According to Moore's Law, the doubling of transistor density is achieved with a 50% increase in unit cost.

Substances that electrons can flow through are called ____.

Integrated circuits reduced manufacturing cost per circuit because many chips could be manufactured in a single sheet, or wafer.

The first group of bits in an instruction represents its unique binary number, commonly called the ____.

A ____ operation is a data transfer from main memory into a register.