Questions and Answers of Computer System Design

Discussed four general methods for coping with complexity: modularity, abstraction, hierarchy, and layering.a. Which of those four methods does client/service use as its primary organizing scheme?b.
Discussed four general methods for coping with complexity: modularity, abstraction, hierarchy, and layering.a. Which of those four methods does virtual memory use as its primary organizing scheme?b.
True or false? Explain: modularity reduces complexity because A. It reduces the effect of incommensurate scaling.B. It helps control propagation of effects.
True or false? Explain: hierarchy reduces complexity because A. It reduces the size of individual modules.B. It cuts down on the number of interconnections between elements.C. It assembles a number
If one created a graph of personal friendships, one would have a hierarchy.True or false?
Which of the following is usually observed in a complex computer system?A. The underlying technology has a high rate of change.B. It is easy to write a succinct description of the behavior of the
Ben Bitdiddle has written a program with 16 major modules of code. Each module contains several procedures. In the first implementation of his program, he finds that each module contains at least one
Ben Bitdiddle has accepted a job with the telephone company and has been asked to implement call forwarding. He has been pondering what to do if someone forwards calls to some number and then the
Consider the part of the file system naming hierarchy illustrated in the following:a. In the path name and in the figure, identify the context that you should use for that resolution and the context
One way to speed up the resolving of names is to implement a cache that remembers recently looked-up {name, object} pairs.a. What problems do synonyms pose for cache designers, as compared with
Louis Reasoner has become concerned about the efficiency of the search rule implementation in the Eunuchs system (an emasculated version of the unix system). He proposes to add a referenced object
The last line of Figure 2.4 names three Web browsers as examples of interpreters. Explain how a Web browser is an interpreter by identifying its instruction reference, its repertoire, and its
Alyssa asks you for some help in understanding how metadata is handled in the unix file system, as described in Section 2.5.a. Where does the unix system store system metadata about a file?b. Where
Bob and Alice are using a unix file system as described in Section 2.5. The file system has two disks, mounted as /disk1 and /disk2. A system administrator creates a “home” directory containing
We can label the path names in the previous question as semantic path names. If Bob types "cd .." while in working directoryd, the command changes the working directory to the directory in which d
The inode of a file plays an important role in the unix file system. Which of these statements is true of the inode data structure, as described in Section 2.5?A. The inode of a file contains a
Section 3.3.1 describes a name collision problem. What could the designer of that system have done differently to eliminate (or reduce to a negligible probability) the possibility of this problem
When modularity between a client and a service is enforced, there is no way for errors in the implementation of the service to propagate to its clients. True or False? Explain.
To client software, a notable difference between remote procedure call and ordinary local procedure call is:A. None. That’s the whole point of RPC!B. There may be multiple returns from one RPC
Which of the following statements is true of the X Window System (see Sidebar 4.4)?A. The X server is a trusted intermediary and attempts to enforce modularity between X clients in their use of the
While browsing the Web, you click on a link that identifies an Internet host named www.cslab.scholarly.edu. Your browser asks your Domain Name System (DNS) name server, M, to find an Internet address
For the same situation as in Exercise 4.5, which of the following is always true of the name resolution process, assuming that all name servers are configured correctly and no messages are lost?A. If
The Network File System (NFS) described in Section 4.5 allows a client machine to run operations on files that are stored at a remote server. For the version of NFS described there, decide if each of
Assume that an NFS (described in Section 4.5) server contains a file /a/b and that an NFS client mounts the NFS server’s root directory in the location /x, so that the client can now name the file
Alyssa is trying to organize her notes on virtual memory systems, and it occurred to her that virtual memory systems can usefully be analyzed as naming systems. She went through Chapter 3 and made a
The Modest Mini Corporation’s best-selling computer allows at most two users to run at a time. Its only addressing architecture feature is a single page map, which creates a simple linear address
One advantage of a microkernel over a monolithic kernel is that it reduces the load on the translation look-aside buffer, and thereby increases its hit rate and its consequent effect on performance.
Louis writes a multithreaded program, which produces an incorrect answer some of the time, but always completes. He suspects a race condition. Which of the following are strategies that can reduce,
Which of the following statements about operating system kernels are true?A. Preemptive scheduling allows the kernel’s thread manager to run applications in a way that helps avoid fate sharing.B.
Two threads, A and B, execute a procedure named glorp but always at different times (that is, only one of the threads calls the procedure at a given time). glorp contains the following code:a.
Consider three threads, concurrently executing the three programs shown here. The variables x, y, and z are integers with initial value 0.a. Can executing these three threads concurrently produce a
Suppose a processor has a clock rate of 100 megahertz. The time required to retrieve a word from the cache is 1 nanosecond, and the time required to retrieve a word not in the cache is 101
A particular program uses 100 data objects, each 105 bytes long. The objects are contiguously allocated in a two-level memory system using the LRU page replacement policy with a fast memory of 106
OutTel corporation has been delivering j786 microprocessors to the computer industry for some time, and Metoo systems has decided to get into the act by building a microprocessor called the
Mike R. Kernel is designing the OutTel P97 computer system, which currently has one page table in hardware. The first tests with this design show excellent performance with one application, but with
Ben Bitdiddle gets really excited about remote procedure call and implements an RPC package himself. His implementation starts a new service thread for each arriving request. The thread performs the
Why might increasing the page size of a virtual memory system increase performance? Why might increasing the page size of a virtual memory system decrease performance?
Ben Bitdiddle and Louis Reasoner are examining a 3.5-inch magnetic disk that spins at 7,500 RPM, with an average seek time of 6.5 milliseconds and a data transfer rate of 10 megabytes per second.
Ben Bitdiddle has proposed the simple neat and robust file system (SNARFS).* Ben’s system has no on-disk data structures other than the disk blocks themselves, which are self-describing. Each
Ben Bitdiddle has written a “style checker” intended to uncover writing problems in technical papers. The program picks up one sentence at a time, computes intensely for a while to parse it into