B CompE Bachelor of Computer Engineering Bachelor of Computer Engineering Computer Architecture 4

Question 1

Which storage class in the memory hierarchy typically offers the highest bandwidth but the smallest capacity?

Accepted Answer

CPU registers

Answer

CPU registers are on-chip storage directly accessible by the ALU in a single cycle, providing the highest throughput but limited to a few dozen slots.

Question 2

In IEEE 754 single-precision floating point, how many bits are allocated to the exponent field?

Accepted Answer

8

Answer

IEEE 754 single-precision uses 1 sign bit, 8 exponent bits with a bias of 127, and 23 mantissa bits for a total of 32 bits.

Question 3

Which technique allows multiple processes to share a single physical memory region by mapping it into each process's virtual address space?

Accepted Answer

Shared memory mapping

Answer

Shared memory mapping lets multiple processes map the same physical frames, enabling efficient inter-process communication without data copying.

Question 4

In a VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) architecture, the responsibility for detecting and scheduling independent operations falls on:

Accepted Answer

The compiler

Answer

VLIW relies on the compiler to statically pack multiple independent operations into a single wide instruction word, eliminating runtime hazard detection hardware.

Question 5

Which cache replacement policy will always produce the fewest misses if future access patterns are known?

Accepted Answer

Optimal (Bélády's algorithm)

Answer

Bélády's algorithm evicts the block whose next use is furthest in the future, guaranteeing the minimum possible miss rate given perfect future knowledge.

B CompE Bachelor of Computer Engineering Practice Test

B CompE Bachelor of Computer Engineering Practice Test

B CompE Bachelor of Computer Engineering Bachelor of Computer Engineering Computer Architecture 4