Grade 11 Unit 1: Hardware

Question 1

How was communication between North and Southbridge done?

Answer 1

Through the PCI Bus

Question 2

What was the PCI Bus’ bandwidth?

Answer 2

132 MB/s

Question 3

What was the problem with the method of communication between the North and Southbridge?

Answer 3

The available bandwidth was shared between all PCI devices and all devices linked to Southbridge (particularly HDDs) so when high-performance HDDs and video cards were launched, a bottleneck situation arose

Question 4

What was the solution to the problem of the bottleneck arising with the PCI bus inter-bridge architecture for video cards?

Answer 4

The AGP

Question 5

Expand AGP

Answer 5

Accelerated graphics port

Question 6

Is the AGP connected to the North or Southbridge?

Answer 6

Northbridge

Question 7

What inter-bridge architecture is used today?

Answer 7

There is now a dedicated high-speed connection between the North and Southbridge (FSB) and all PCI devices connect to the Southbridge

Question 8

PCI Express lanes can be found on both the North and Southbridge? True or False?

Answer 8

True

Question 9

How fast did the first Intel chipsets using the modern architecture run?

Answer 9

266 MB/s

Question 10

What is half-duplex?

Answer 10

Only one channel can transmit at a time

Question 11

Were the first Intel chipsets using the modern architecture half or full-duplex?

Answer 11

Half-duplex

Question 12

Expand DMI

Answer 12

Direct Media Interface

Question 13

How fast does a current generation FSB run?

Answer 13

266 MHz to 400 MHz

Question 14

What are the effective running speeds of current generation FSBs?

Answer 14

1066 to 1600 MHz

Question 15

How fast can the HyperTransport Bus operate?

Answer 15

200 MHz to 3.2 GHz

Question 16

How wide are HyperTransport Bus links?

Answer 16

2 to 32 bits per link

Question 17

Expand IMC

Answer 17

Integrated Memory Controller

Question 18

Define overclocking

Answer 18

Overclocking is the practice of making computer components operate beyond their performance levels by manipulating the frequencies at which the component is set to run

Question 19

Expand CU

Answer 19

Control Unit

Question 20

What steps are involved in the machine cycle?

Answer 20

Fetch
Decode
Execute
Store

Question 21

Expand DDR

Answer 21

Double Data Rate

Question 22

Expand SDRAM

Answer 22

Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory

Question 23

Name 5 reasons PCI-e has replaced the AGP

Answer 23

Higher bandwidth throughput 
Lower latency
Lower pin count
Transfers in both directions 
Can also be used for hard drives or the like

Question 24

What is PCI-Express?

Answer 24

A two-way, serial connection that carries data along two pairs of point-to-point data lanes

Question 25

What is the minimum refresh rate that a screen image can have so that the eye sees no flickering?

Answer 25

75 Hz

Question 26

How much data and at what speed do modern PCI buses transfer data?

Answer 26

64 bits at over 500 Mbps

Question 27

How fast were the different iterations of USB?

Answer 27

USB 12 Mbps
USB 2.0 480 Mbps
USB 3.0 5 Gbps

Question 28

How fast is the FireWire port?

Answer 28

400 Mbps

Question 29

How fast are the different iterations of SATANISM?

Answer 29

SATA 2.0 3 Gbps

SATA 3.0 6 Gbps

Question 30

Access time equals?

Answer 30

Seek time + Latency

Question 31

How much can a CD store?

Answer 31

783 MB

Question 32

How much data can a DVD store?

Answer 32

4.7 GB

Question 33

How much data can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc?

Answer 33

25 GB

Question 34

Expand EEPROM

Answer 34

Electronically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory

Question 35

Expand POST

Answer 35

Power On Self Test