Clemson University -- CPSC 231 -- Fall 2007 -- Study Guide for Exam 5

Covers chapter 10.

1. Be able to define and discuss these terms:

        MHz                     bus                     controller
        isolated I/O (ports)    memory-mapped I/O       buffer register
        status register         command register        busy-wait loop
        programmed I/O          interrupt-driven I/O    interrupt
        DMA                     disk seek               disk rotational delay
        disk transfer           keyboard scan codes     raw
        cooked                  disk striping           RAID
        blocking                logical record          physical record
        I/O channel             channel program         scatter-gather

2. Be able to compare programmed I/O, interrupt-driven I/O, and DMA I/O.

3. Be able to identify the three typical registers for an I/O controller.

4. Be able to identify the additional two controller registers for DMA.

5. Be able to calculate number of instructions executed in a specific interval
   given clock rate, cycles per instruction, and length of interval.

6. Be able to calculate the performance of disk drives and other peripherals,
   such as total read/write time and IOPS (number of I/O transfers per second).

7. Be able to calculate number of interrupts per second given CPU parameters,
   interruption overhead, and ISR path length (i.e., instruction count).

8. Be able to show the fetch-decode-execute cycle diagram extended with
   checking for interrupts, hardware actions upon interrupt acknowledgement,
   and execution actions of the RTI (IRET) instruction.

9. Be able to describe, in general terms, how a RAID system can tolerate
   the failure of a single disk.