How precisely does Direct Memory Access (DMA), which is said to be able to increase system concurrency, work? Is there a particular mechanism through which this retards the progression of technological innovation?

How does pipelining improve CPU efficiency? What’s the potential effect on pipelining’s efficiency when executing a conditional BRANCH instruction? What techniques can be used to make pipelining more efficient when executing conditional BRANCH instructions?

Processor R is a 64-bit RISC processor with a 2 GHz clock rate. The average instruction requires one cycle to complete, assuming zero wait state memory accesses. Processor C is a CISC processor with a 1.8 GHz clock rate. The average simple instruction requires one cycle to complete, assuming zero wait state memory accesses. The average complex instruction requires two cycles to complete, assuming zero wait state memory accesses. Processor R can’t directly implement the complex processing instructions of Processor C. Executing an equivalent set of simple instructions requires an average of three cycles to complete, assuming zero wait state memory accesses. Program S contains nothing but simple instructions. Program C executes 70% simple instructions and 30% complex instructions. Which processor will execute program S more quickly? Which processor will execute program C more quickly? At what percentage of complex instructions will the performance of the two processors be equal?

How does a supercomputer differ from a mainframe computer?

(Practice) Although the total number of bytes varies from computer to computer, memory sizes of millions and billions of bytes are common. In computer language, the letter M representsthe number 1,048,576, which is 2 raised to the 20th power, and G represents 1,073,741,824, which is 2 raised to the 30th power. Therefore, a memory size of 4 MB is really 4 times 1,048,576 (4,194,304 bytes), and a memory size of 2 GB is really 2 times 1,073,741,824 (2,147,483,648 bytes). Using this information, calculate the actual number of bytes in the following: a. A memory containing 512 MB b. A memory consisting of 512 MB words, where each word consists of 2 bytes c. A memory consisting of 512 MB words, where each word consists of 4 bytes d. A thumb drive that specifies 2 GB e. A disk that specifies 4 GB f. A disk that specifies 8 GB