Types of Memory Flashcards
Key features of RAM
Each location can be accessed and changed, RAM is volatile so when there is no power the information is lost
Key features of ROM
Each location can be accessed but not changed/modified, ROM is non-volatile (the values are “hard coded” into the address)
What is main memory
Storage location which can be directly accessed by the CPU
What is secondary memory
Storage which are used for non-active information stored over longer periods of time
What are features of a Magnetic Disk Storage
Track, Read/write head, sector, block. cylinder, seek time, latency, access time, transfer
What are the 3 different versions of an Optical Disks
Compact disk, Digital versatile disk, Blu-ray
Why is SSD’s better the HDD
There are no moving parts, so they are faster and quieter than mechanical disk drives
What is Parallel Computing
When some operations are performed concurrently (at the same time)
What are the four common approaches to parallel computing
Bit-level, Instruction-level, Data-level, Task-level
Define Bit-level parallelism
Individual bits can be processed simultaneously
Define Instruction-level parallelism
Some instructions can be executed independently
What are the two forms of Instruction-level parallelism
Pipelining, Superscalar
Define Pipelining
Overlapping instructions which can be carried out in series
Define Superscalar
Having multiple execution units which allow us to execute multiple instructions per cycle, increasing the bandwidth of our processor
Define Data-level Parallelism
Single instruction to many pieces of data simultaneously, Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD)
