Question

Discuss the main design principles for a CPU in a modern computer.

*Briefly explain the benefits of using a multiple-bus architecture compared to a single-bus architecture.

*Explain with the aid of a diagram the hierarchy of memory ranging from slowest to fastest access.

* Briefly explain the performance and reliability characteristics of Raid 1+0 disk configuration and how it is achieved.

*Briefly describe the bottlenecks in the Von Neumann computer architecture, and highlight ways by which these bottlenecks may be overcome.

Answer 1

1. Speed is the major benefit of having multiple bus architecture than having a single bus architecture. Because in the case of single bus architecture if at a time two different devices need a bus to be accessed, then there will be a conflict because at a time only one device can use the bus. Thus, for this reason, it will make the devices go into the waiting state and thus it will reduce the performance. But in the case of multiple bus architecture, we have multiple buses to be used at a time by many devices thus the performance of the system will be more.
2. Following is the diagram explaining the memory hierarchy.
   
3. In the case of RAID 1+0, the data is mirrored and striped. This offers higher performance but at a very high cost. This configuration is reliable but a high cost.
   Following is the diagram for RAID 1+0
   
4. In the case of Von Neumann computer architecture, there is bottleneck on the performance as over the past decade, there is huge improvement on the processing speed but the improvement of performance on the memory side is not that appreciable thus processor has to wait for the data to be fetched from the memory that becomes bottleneck for the performance.
   Ways to overcome this bottleneck.
   1. Cache: To store the data to be accessed in the cache, so that the data can be accessed very fastly rather than fetching it from memory each time.
   2. Prefetching: It can also help if we fetch the data that is going to get used later into memory already.
   3. Multithreading: Sending multiple requests in separate threads to access fast.

Friend, That was a nice question to answer
If you have any doubts in understanding do let me know in the comment section. I will be happy to help you further.
Please like it if you think effort deserves like.
Thanks