ch01 TB
ch01 TB
Chapter: Chapter 1
Multiple Choice
1.
A)
B)
C)
D)
Ans: B
Section 1.1
Difficulty: Easy
2.
A)
B)
C)
D)
Ans: C
Feedback: 1.1.1
Difficulty: Easy
3.
A)
B)
C)
D)
Ans:
Feedback: 1.2.2
Difficulty: Easy
4. Which of the following would lead you to believe that a given system is an SMP-type
system?
A) Each processor is assigned a specific task.
B) There is a bossworker relationship between the processors.
C) Each processor performs all tasks within the operating system.
D) None of the above
Ans: C
Feedback: 1.3.2
Difficulty: Medium
5. A ____ can be used to prevent a user program from never returning control to the operating
system.
A) portal
B) program counter
C) firewall
D) timer
Ans: D
Feedback: 1.5.2
Difficulty: Medium
6.
A)
B)
C)
D)
Ans: A
Feedback: 1.11.8
Difficulty: Medium
7. Bluetooth and 802.11 devices use wireless technology to communicate over several feet, in
essence creating a ____.
A) local-area network
B) wide-area network
C) small-area network
D) metropolitan-area network
Ans: C
Feedback: 1.11.3
Difficulty: Easy
9.
A)
B)
C)
D)
Ans: A
Feedback: 1.11.5
Difficulty: Easy
10.
A)
B)
C)
D)
Ans: B
Feedback: 1.8.3
Difficulty: Medium
12. Which of the following statements concerning open source operating systems is true?
A) Solaris is open source.
B) Source code is freely available.
C) They are always more secure than commercial, closed systems.
D) All open source operating systems share the same set of goals.
Ans: B
Feedback: 1.12
Difficulty: Medium
14. A _____ provides a file-system interface which allows clients to create and modify files.
A) compute-server system
B) file-server system
C) wireless network
D) network computer
Ans: B
Difficulty: Easy
Feedback: 1.11.4
16. __________ is a set of software frameworks that provide additional services to application
developers.
A) System programs
B) Virtualization
C) Cloud computing
D) Middleware
Ans: D
Difficulty: Medium
Feedback: 1.1.3
Difficulty: Medium
Feedback:1.11.2
Essay
21.
Ans: A computer system has many resources that may be required to solve a problem: CPU
time, memory space, file-storage space, I/O devices, and so on. The operating system acts as the
manager of these resources. Facing numerous and possibly conflicting requests for resources,
the operating system must decide how to allocate them to specific programs and users so that it
can operate the computer system efficiently and fairly.
Feedback: 1.1.2
Difficulty: Medium
22.
Ans: The interrupt vector is merely a table of pointers to specific interrupt-handling routines.
Because there are a fixed number of interrupts, this table allows for more efficient handling of
the interrupts than with a general-purpose, interrupt-processing routine.
Feedback: 1.2.1
Difficulty: Medium
24. What role do device controllers and device drivers play in a computer system?
Ans: A general-purpose computer system consists of CPUs and multiple device controllers that
are connected through a common bus. Each device controller is in charge of a specific type of
device. The device controller is responsible for moving the data between the peripheral devices
that it controls and its local buffer storage. Typically, operating systems have a device driver for
each device controller. This device driver understands the device controller and presents a
uniform interface for the device to the rest of the operating system.
Feedback: 1.2.1
Difficulty: Medium
26. Describe the differences between physical, virtual, and logical memory.
Ans: Physical memory is the memory available for machines to execute operations (i.e., cache,
random access memory, etc.). Virtual memory is a method through which programs can be
executed that requires space larger than that available in physical memory by using disk memory
as a backing store for main memory. Logical memory is an abstraction of the computers
different types of memory that allows programmers and applications a simplified view of
memory and frees them from concern over memory-storage limitations.
Feedback: 1.4
Difficulty: Medium
27.
Ans: In order to ensure the proper execution of the operating system, most computer systems
provide hardware support to distinguish between user mode and kernel mode. A mode bit is
added to the hardware of the computer to indicate the current mode: kernel (0) or user (1).
When the computer system is executing on behalf of a user application, the system is in user
mode. However, when a user application requests a service from the operating system (via a
system call), it must transition from user to kernel mode to fulfill the request.
Feedback: 1.5.1
Difficulty: Medium
28.
Ans: In multiprocessor environments, two copies of the same data may reside in the local cache
of each CPU. Whenever one CPU alters the data, the cache of the other CPU must receive an
updated version of this data. Cache coherency involves ensuring that multiple caches store the
most updated version of the stored data.
Feedback: 1.8.3
Difficulty: Medium
29. Why is main memory not suitable for permanent program storage or backup purposes?
Furthermore, what is the main disadvantage to storing information on a magnetic disk drive as
opposed to main memory?
Ans: Main memory is a volatile memory in that any power loss to the system will result in
erasure of the data stored within that memory. While disk drives can store more information
permanently than main memory, disk drives are significantly slower.
Feedback: 1.2
Difficulty: Hard
31. Computer systems can be divided into four approximate components. What are they?
Ans: Hardware, operating system, application programs, and users.
Feedback: 1.1
Difficulty: Easy
33. Describe why direct memory access (DMA) is considered an efficient mechanism for
performing I/O.
Ans: DMA is efficient for moving large amounts of data between I/O devices and main memory.
It is considered efficient because it removes the CPU from being responsible for transferring data.
DMA instructs the device controller to move data between the devices and main memory.
Feedback: 1.2.3
Difficulty: Medium
34. Describe why multi-core processing is more efficient than placing each processor on its own
chip.
Ans: A large reason why it is more efficient is that communication between processors on the
35. Distinguish between uniform memory access (UMA) and non-uniform memory access
(NUMA) systems.
Ans: On UMA systems, accessing RAM takes the same amount of time from any CPU. On
NUMA systems, accessing some parts of memory may take longer than accessing other parts of
memory, thus creating a performance penalty for certain memory accesses.
Feedback: 1.3.2
Difficulty: Medium
36. Explain the difference between singly, doubly, and circularly linked lists.
Ans: A singly linked list is where each item points to its successor. A doubly linked
linked list allows an item to point to its predecessor or successor. A circularly linked
list is the where the last element points back to the first.
Feedback:1.10.1
Difficulty:Easy
Ans: Mobile computing takes place on handheld devices and tablets. Because these devices are
portable and lightweight, they typically do not have the processing power and storage capacity of
desktop systems. However, features such as GPS and accelerometers have allowed mobile
devices to provide functionality that is unavailable to desktop systems.
Feedback: 1.11.2
Difficulty: Medium
True/False
41.
The operating system kernel consists of all system and application programs in a computer.
Ans: False
Feedback: 1.1.3
Difficulty: Easy
42.
Flash memory is slower than DRAM but needs no power to retain its contents.
Ans: True
Feedback: 1.2.2
Difficulty: Easy
43.
Ans: False
Feedback: 1.5.1
Difficulty: Easy
44. UNIX does not allow users to escalate privileges to gain extra permissions for a restricted
activity.
Ans: False
Feedback: 1.9
Difficulty: Medium
45.
Processors for most mobile devices run at a slower speed than a processor in a desktop PC.
Ans: True
Feedback: 1.11.2
Difficulty: Medium
47. A dual-core system requires each core has its own cache memory.
Ans: False
Feedback: 1.3.2
Difficulty: Easy
48. Virtually all modern operating systems provide support for SMP
Ans: True
Feedback: 1.3.2
Difficulty: Easy
Ans: False
Feedback: 1.1.1
Difficulty:Medium
50. Solid state disks are generally faster than magnetic disks.
Ans: True
Feedback: 1.2.2
Difficulty: Easy