Low-level Operations and Computer Architecture- Computing Science

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What is a 2 state machine?
A computer system is known as a 2 state machine because the processing and storage devices in a computer have 1 feature in common - their components only have 2 states. The states are 'on' (represented by '1') and off (represented by '2').
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What is a bit?
A single unit in binary is called a bit. The word bit is made up from the 2 words 'BInary digiT.
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What is a byte?
A binary number which is made up from 8 bits. The largest byte is 1111 1111, which is 255.
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What is represented by floating point representation?
Real numbers in binary are represented by floating point representation.
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What is the mantissa and the exponent? (Floating Point Representation)
m x base^e : m is the mantissa and e is the exponent. The mantissa is the actual digits of the number and the exponent is the power.
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What are 7 units of storage? (Smallest to largest)
Bit, byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte
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What is RAM usually measured in?
Gigabytes
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What is a character?
A character is a symbol, number or letter on the computer keyboard. Characters include the digits 0 to 9 (numeric characters), letters (alphabetic characters) and punctuation marks (special characters).
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What is a character set?
A character set is a list of all the characters which a computer can process and store.
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How are characters represented?
Each character has a different code, eg. In ASCII, R is represented by 0101 0010, or 82.
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What is ASCII?
ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It is the most popular form of code to represent a character. It is a 7 bit code so it allows 2^7 or 128 different codes.
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What is unicode?
Unicode is a character set designed to represent the writing schemes of all the world's major languages. The first 128 characters are identical to ASCII, but Unicode is a 16 bit code and can therefore represent 65,536 different characters.
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What is an instruction?
Instructions are used to tell a computer what to do. A set of instructions that a computer can understand is called a program.
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What is a high level language?
A computer language that uses normal or every day language.
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What is the computer's own language called?
Machine code.
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Describe pixels.
Graphics are made up from tiny dots called pixels. The whole of the computer screen is made up from many thousands of pixels. Each pixel may be 'on' ('1' means you can see it) or 'off' ('0' means you can't see it.)
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What are bit-mapped graphics?
Bit mapped graphics are made up of individual pixels that are different colours to represent an image.
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What are vector graphics?
Vector graphics are different objects on the screen. Attributes.
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Do bitmap or vector take up less space?
Vector, as bitmap uses the whole screen to store one image, whereas vector stores objects seperately.
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What is the formula to work out the storage requirements of colour or greyscale graphics?
Storage requirements = total number of pixels used in the image x number of bits used to represent colours or shades of grey for each pixel.
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What are Scalable Vector Graphics?
SVG is a method of representing vector graphics on a computer system. It works in 2D. SVG files are plain text files, written in mark-up language.
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Give 3 examples of high-level languages.
Scratch, Comal, HTML, JAVA
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What does a translator program do?
Translates one program code from one language to another. For example from a high level language to machine code.
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What are the 2 types of translator?
Compilers and interpreters.
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What is a compiler?
A compiler can translate a high-level language program to machine code in a single operation. The original high level language program is called the source code and the machine code produced by the compiler is the object code.
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What is an interpreter?
An interpreter is a translator program, and translates by translating one line of high-level language program to machine code and then executing it before moving onto the next line.
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What translator program is quicker and why?
Interpreted programs run slower than compiled programs because the interpreter must translate and execute each instruction every time the program is run. There is no object code produced, and the interpreter must be present in order to run the progr
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How are errors reported in each program?
They are reported immediately in interpreted programs, and at the end for compiled programs.
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What is a computer system made up of?
The processor and memory together with input, output and storage devices.
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What is hardware?
Hardware is all the physical parts of the computer. A single item of hardware is called a device.
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What is the processor?
The processor is where all the sorting, searching, calculating and decision making goes on. It follows instructions and it can process several billions of instructions every second.
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What does the control unit do? (in the processor)
The control unit controls all the other parts of the processor and makes sure that the program instructions are carried out in the correct order. It makes sure everything happens at the right place and right time.
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What does the arithmetic and logic unit do? (in the processor)
The ALU carries out the calculations and makes decisions. When it makes a decision, this is a logical operation.
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What are the registers in the processor?
The registers are a group of storage locations and are used to hold data being processed, program instructions being run and memory addresses to be accessed.
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What is RAM?
Random Access Memory is the type of computer memory which holds data as long as the computer is switched on. It can only store programs and data temporarily as it is lost when the computer is switched off.
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What is ROM?
Read only memory is used to store programs and data permanently.
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What are buses?
Buses is the term used for the sets of wires which connect the processor to the other parts inside the computer system, such as the memory and input/output devices.
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What is the address bus?
An address is a binary number used to identify a storage location in main memory. The address bus carries the address information from the processor to the memory and any other devices attached to the bus. It is one way only.
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What is the data bus?
The date bus carries data to and from the processor, memory and any other devices attached to the data bus. It is bi-directional/two-way.
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What is the control bus?
The control bus is made up of a number of seperate wires, each with its own function.
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What is an interface?
An interface is the hardware and associated software needed to allow communication between the processor and its peripheral devices.
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What do interfaces compensate for?
Differences in speed or date format between the processor and its peripheral device. This may require conversion.
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What is a peripheral device?
A device which may be connected to the outside of computer system, for input, output or backing storage.
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Name 4 different types of interface.
Universal Serial Bus, Firewire, Thunderbolt and Ethernet.
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

What is a bit?

Back

A single unit in binary is called a bit. The word bit is made up from the 2 words 'BInary digiT.

Card 3

Front

What is a byte?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

What is represented by floating point representation?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

What is the mantissa and the exponent? (Floating Point Representation)

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
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