Computer Architecture (IT-402) - Important Questions

Differentiate between computer architecture and computer organization.

Compare and discuss Bus Transfer and Memory Transfer operations and how they aid data movement within the CPU.

Explain the characteristics and evolution of the first to fifth computer generations and their influence on modern computer architecture.

Describe Register Transfer Language (RTL) with suitable examples and explain basic register transfer operations in instruction execution.

Explain the differences between hardwired and microprogrammed control units.

Explain the concept of control memory and its role and advantages in simplifying instruction execution in micro-programmed control units.

Explain sign-magnitude, 1's complement and 2's complement representations and define their range.

Explain stack organization in CPUs and its applications in function calling, recursion and memory management.

Explain the different addressing modes with suitable examples, including those commonly found in RISC and CISC architectures.

Explain the working principle of Direct Memory Access (DMA) and discuss its benefits/advantages over programmed I/O.

Explain zero, one, two and three address instruction formats with examples.

What is virtual memory? Explain paging and segmentation with suitable diagrams.

Explain the memory hierarchy with a neat diagram.

Describe auxiliary memory and associative memory with their applications and advantages over main memory.

Describe the design/concept of an arithmetic pipeline and explain how it improves computational speed/performance of arithmetic operations.

Explain parallel processing and its advantages.