Worksheet 1 Computer architecture
Unit 5 Computer organisation
Worksheet 1 Internal computer architecture Answers
Task 1 Input – process - output
Complete the diagrams below outlining the basic operations of various computer systems
(a) Writing a story using a word processing package
Input Process Output
Keyboard Characters
Story displayed
presses encoded
(b) Showing the position of a car on a Sat Nav
Input Process Output
Coordinates
Position on
GPS signal matched to
map displayed
place on map
(c) Taking a photo on a Smartphone
Input Process Output
Image through
Image
lens, button Image digitised
displayed
press
(d) Paying for a car park ticket in an automated machine
Input Process Output
Amount paid
checked
Ticket, money Validated ticket
against time of
stay
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Worksheet 1 Computer architecture
Unit 5 Computer organisation
Task 2 System buses
Data within a computer is moved around its various components using a series of
interconnections known as the system bus.
Complete the diagram below to label the following parts showing the direction in which
addresses travel:
Processor, Data bus, Address bus, I/O controller, Main memory
Task 3 Word length
Memory is divided into equal units called words. Each word has a separate memory address.
A processor uses a word length of 16 bits and has an address bus of 16 lines.
a) What is the maximum number of addressable words in memory? 216 = 65,536
b) What is the overall memory capacity in KiB? 65,536 x 2 bytes (16 bits) / 1024 = 128 KiB
c) How does the width of the address bus affect system performance? Increases the
number of addressable memory spaces available // Increases the maximum amount of
primary storage. This indirectly affects system performance if large data files (e.g. image
files) need to be manipulated or large programs executed. Also multi-processing will be
more efficient as many processes can be held simultaneously in memory.
d) How does the width of the data bus affect system performance? Increases the data
transfer rate // number of bits that can be transferred at one time, therefore increases
system performance.
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Worksheet 1 Computer architecture
Unit 5 Computer organisation
Task 4 Memory and the stored program concept
Using standard von Neumann architecture, instructions and data both share the same memory
space.
Memory
Address Instruction / Data
0 10010111 00101111
2 00000000 11010100
… …
255 00000000 01001010
One problem with this model is that the CPU can either be reading an instruction or
reading/writing data to or from memory, but not both at the same time since instructions and
data use the same bus system, which is a performance limitation.
a) Name another architecture that resolves this issue. How does it differ from von
Neumann architecture?
Harvard architecture – this has separate memories for instructions and data. Separate
data buses transfer instructions and data to and from memory
b) What other advantages are there of using this architecture?
Avoids data erroneously overwriting programming instructions in the same address
location;
Data cannot be executed as code;
Can employ larger data or instruction memory as required // memory address structures
do not need to be the same;
Data and instructions can have different word lengths;
