Part 1 Block 3 - Putting it all together

Question 1

The microchips that contain the heart of the computer, the processor and main memory, are mounted on a circuit board called a m_____________________.

Answer 1

motherboard

Question 2

Name 3 peripheral devices?

Answer 2

A printer, a mouse, a disk drive…

Question 3

Secondary memory (or secondary storage) is the term given to the storage devices that contain p______________ data.

Answer 3

persistent

Question 4

In most devices, secondary storage is built into the case and is usually supplied in the form of a h_____ d_________ drive or a s_____-s_________ drive

Answer 4

a hard disk drive
solid-state drive

Question 5

Which device, a hard-disk drive or a solid-state drive, uses a rotating electromagnetically charged surface to store data?

Answer 5

a hard disk drive

Question 6

Which device, a hard-disk drive or a solid-state drive, uses integrated circuits to store data?

Answer 6

a solid-state drive

Question 7

Which device, a hard-disk drive or a solid-state drive, has the advantage of containing no moving parts and being much faster to access.

Answer 7

the solid-state drive

Question 8

Secondary memory is used to store program code and data files that are not immediately needed by the computer system, so it is sometimes referred to as f______-s________ memory.

Answer 8

file-storage memory

Question 9

For secondary storage (as well as file sizes and data transfer rates) should be use binary or decimal prefixes?

Answer 9

decimal prefixes

Question 10

The memory hierarchy

Why do we not just build computers with a giant main memory?

Answer 10

it is expensive

Question 11

The memory hierarchy

The fastest memory access is in the r___________.

Answer 11

registers

Question 12

The memory hierarchy

Registers are built directly into the processor, so there are usually a fixed number of them – typically fewer than 50.

Can we add more?

Answer 12

No

Question 13

The memory hierarchy

The slowest memory access is to h_____ d_______ storage, roughly 10,000 times slower than for the registers.

Answer 13

hard-disk

Question 14

The memory hierarchy

Which is cheaper, hard disk storage memory or register memory?

Answer 14

the slowest one, so, hard disk storage memory.

Question 15

The memory hierarchy

Although secondary storage is a hardware component, the memory resources of a computer system are managed by s________ – specifically the operating system.

Answer 15

software