CSC420 Quiz 1

1) Describe the difference between volatile and non-volatile memory.

Volatile memory is lost when the power is turned off, non-volatile memory is not lost even after power is turned off.

2) There are two methods of performing I/O.  __synchronous__ I/O is described as when a user program waits for the completion of I/O before continuing processing.  __asynchronous__ I/O returns control to the user program without waiting for I/O to complete.

3) DMA device controllers transfer an entire block of data to/from memory with no intervention from the CPU.  Only a single interrupt is generated instead of an interrupt for each byte. What does DMA stand for?

Direct Memory Access

4) Events are signaled to the CPU by means of an __interrupt__.

5) Describe what a trap is.

A software generated interrupt