Caching. CPUs. Hard disk drives. Parallelism. Pipelining. RAM. Registers. Solid-state drives.

Dinkleberg

1. (3 points) You know that neighbor who always one-ups you? Apparently, he just bought a processor that has twice as many cores as yours. Why is that better? What eects does a higher number of cores have on performance? Is your neighbor's processor twice as fast because it has twice as many cores?

2. (2 points) Unsatised, your neighbor turns in his processor for a new CPU whose clock speed doubles that of your CPU. Now, is it twice as fast? Why or why not?

A Parallel Universe

3. (2 points) What does it mean for a CPU to be superscalar? Why does a superscalar architecture improve the eciency of a CPU?

4. (2 points)If Moore's Law says processing power will double every 18 months, then why can't our processors have phenomenal cosmic power? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfTfXLLJlzM) at is, why can't this trend continue forever?

5. (5 points) It's Halloween again, and you and 7 of your closest friends have a huge bag of candy. Now, you'd like to gure out how many dierent types of candy (e.g., Milky Way, Snickers, or Krackel) you received on your travels. To be clear, if you only got 4 Milky Way bars and 3 Snickers bars (sounds like you need a new trick-or-treating strategy), then you would have 2 dierent types of candy. Without your friends, how could you solve this problem? Now, propose a dierent way of solving this problem that allows you to count the candy faster using your friends' help.

Why is your new method that takes advantage of all 8 people faster? If helpful, you and all of your friends are in the same room (so they can talk to each other), and that room is stocked with paper and pencils if you need to write anything down. Try to think of the fastest solution possible!

Photographic Memory

6. (4 points) My good friend is a budding photographer wondering what size memory card she should buy. Her new camera can use either a CompactFlash card (also called a CF card for short) or a Secure Digital card (also called an SD card for short). Give her a sense of what her options are!

For at least two dierent memory cards sold at the store of your choice (e.g., BestBuy, Amazon, or Fry's), tell her:

i. How large the card is in GB

ii. What the card costs

iii. About how many photos the card can store

iv. Whether or not you think she should buy the card

7. (2 points) My father has a huge music collection, so he's probably going to want to buy a computer with a lot of RAM, right? Why or why not?

Cache Money

8. (2 points) Let's say you purchased a computer that (for some reason or another) didn't have an L1 cache, L2 cache, or L3 cache. Is it possible that such a computer could even function?

Why or why not?

9. (2 points) If registers and the processor cache are faster than RAM, why do computers use RAM for short-term memory storage?

Storage Wars

10. (3 points) My computer has an HDD, and I just opened a Word document. In a succinct but technically detailed paragraph, how is that data read from the HDD?

11. (2 points) Why would you ever want to purchase an HDD over an SSD? How about an SSD over an HDD?

Matching

12. (6 points) Match each item in the left-hand column with the most appropriate descriptor in the right-hand column. For each item, only one descriptor is most appropriate, so you should use each descriptor exactly once!

a. RAM i. 32 bits

b. HDD ii. 64 KB

c. L1 cache iii. 2.6 GHz

d. Register iv. 500 GB

e. L2 cache v. 4 GB

f. CPU vi. 4MB

Bargain Hunter

13. (8 points) Congratulations! You've just won the E-1 lottery, which has a prize of 1400 virtual dollars! You can claim your prize on one condition: you can only spend your winnings on a new computer. First, check out Ben's section video on shopping for laptop and desktop computers, where he discusses the advantages and disadvantages of both. Now, it's your turn to purchase yourself a brand new computer. Head to your local computer store to get a sense of your options, and feel free to ask questions of the store's employees! (You probably don't want to tell them that your lottery winnings are virtual, though). If you can't make it to a computer store, then you're free to do your shopping online, but you're highly encouraged to shop for a computer in person!

Now, tell us about your experience in two or more paragraphs below. What computer would you ultimately decide to purchase? Why? If you interacted with any of the store's employees, what happened? Tell us about your "new" computer's specications, namely:

i. Brand and model

ii. Price

iii. Hard drive capacity

iv. Hard drive type (HDD or SSD)

v. Amount of RAM

vi. Model and speed of CPU

vii. CPU cache size

viii. Display size and maximum resolution

ix. Operating system