UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS: 2016/2017
EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
BBIT102 BAC1101 BIT1109 COMPUTER ORGANISATION &
ARCHITECTURE, COMPUTER ORGANISATION & APPLICATIONS
PART TIME/DISTANCE LEARNING
DATE: AUGUST, 2017 TIME: 2 HOURS
INSTRUCTIONS: Answer Question One & ANY OTHER TWO questions.
QUESTION ONE [30 MARKS]
a) Explain Moore’s law (2 Marks)
b) i) What is an interrupt? (2 Marks)
ii) What are the uses of interrupts? (4 Marks)
c) Differentiate between RISC and CISC (6 Marks)
d) What, in general terms, is the distinction between computer organization and computer
Architecture? (4 Marks)
e) What are the four main functions of a computer? (4 Marks)
f) List and briefly define the main structural components of a processor. (8 Marks)
QUESTION TWO
a) What risks do organization face under virus attack (4 Marks)
b) How would you mitigate the risks in 4(c) (4 Marks)
c) Describe FOUR access methods on storage devices (8 Marks)
d) State TWO latencies associated with magnetic disks (4 Marks)
QUESTION THREE
a) Define pipelining. (2 Marks)
b) What do the following acronyms mean in disk controllers (6 Marks)
i) SCSI
ii) IDE
iii) SATA
QUESTION FOUR
a) Perform the following operations(showing your workings)
i) Hexadecimal :B47F+A29C (4 Marks)
ii) Octal: 456+333 (2 Marks)
b) Define
i) control bus (2 Marks)
ii) word length (2 Marks)
iii) Hertz (2 Marks)
c) What are the steps required for a superscalar processor to process the instruction?
(8 Marks)
QUESTION FIVE
a) Distinguish between a compiler and an interpreter giving an example of each
(4 Marks)
b) Describe SIX functions of the operating system (6 Marks)
c) List FOUR topologies in networks (4 Marks)
d) Explain cache memory. (2 Marks)
e) What are virtual and logical addresses? (4 Marks)
