Higher Computing Unit 1 Systems Set 2

Front 1

Explain how a printer 'buffer' operates

Back 1

Print jobs are sent to the printers inbuilt RAM where they are stored until the printer is ready to print them

Front 2

What is meant by the term 'spooling'?

Back 2

Print jobs are stored in a queue on backing store until the printer is ready to receive them

Front 3

In 'floating point representation' what is the effect of having more bits for the 'mantissa'?

Back 3

Having more bits for the mantissa will improve the precision of the numbers represented

Front 4

A school is using a web server to allow pupils access to the Internet. Describe two functions of a web server

Back 4

A web server can provide virus protection, cache pages locally and filter out undesirable web pages

Front 5

State two advantages of a 'client server network' over a 'peer-to-peer'

Back 5

Updates to software on stations can be managed by the server. There is a central backup of all files

Front 6

Describe two methods of comparing the performance of two computers

Back 6

Mips- measuring how many Millions of Instructions are processed per second and Benchmarking- a set of tasks to measure performance

Front 7

What is cache and how does it improve system performance?

Back 7

Cache is fast access memory. It reduce the number of fetches to the slow RAM by holding commonly used instructions

Front 8

Explain how parallel transmission of data works

Back 8

Data is grouped in 7 bits and transmitted along wires at the same time

Front 9

In 'floating point representation' what is the effect of having more bits for the 'exponent'?

Back 9

Having more bit for the exponent will extend the range of the numbers represented

Front 10

Explain why increase the width of the data bus will improve system performance

Back 10

With a wider data bus more data can be fetched from memory in each fetch execute cycle

Front 11

Explain how a serial interface operates

Back 11

Data is sent one bit at a time along a single transmission line

Front 12

In 'bit-mapped graphics' what is meant by the term 'bit-depth'?

Back 12

The number of bits used to store each pixel and used to represent a range colours

Front 13

Explain the effect on file size of increasing the 'bit-depth' of a graphic?

Back 13

The file size would increase as more bits are used to store each pixel

Front 14

State one disadvantage of a 'client server network' over a 'peer-to-peer'

Back 14

If the server fails then the whole networked is down

Front 15

Explain the effect on file size of reducing the 'resolution' of a graphic?

Back 15

The file size would reduce as there are less pixels in any given area