COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE VIVA QUESTIONS

1. What are the three types of buses?

2. What is instruction?
3. What is a program?
4. What is an interrupt?
5. What is an instruction cycle?
6. What is Computer Organization?
7. What is Computer architecture?
8. What is Primary Memory?
9. What is Secondary Memory?
10. Conversions of Basic Number Systems with definitions and example.
11. What are Registers? Mention and explain
12. What are Flip Flops? (Read all Flip Flops)
13. What are Counters? Types
14. Explain Multiplexer and Demultiplexer.
15. What are encoders and decoders.
16. What is Program Counter(PC)?
17. What do you mean by Stack Pointers(SP)?
18. What is Accumulators(AC/A)?
19. What are General purpose Registers?
20. What is a complier?
21. What do you mean by Flag Registers? Explain them
22. What do you mean by Half adder?
23. What do you mean by full adder?
24. What do you mean by compliments of a number? (Read all complements concept)
25. Define Boolean Algebra.
26. What is Microprocessor?
27. What are types of instructions used in Microprocessor?
28. What are addressing modes?
29. What is instruction format?
30. What are status Bit Code?
31. Explain Architecture of 8085A/8085.
32. Pin Diagram of 8085A/8085.
33. What are micro instructions?
34. What are micro operations?
35. What is RISC and CISC instructions?
36. What are characteristics of RISC and CISC instructions?
37. What is Hardwired Control unit and Microprogrammed Control unit?
Answers for Few Questions
What is a Microprocessor?
Microprocessor is a CPU fabricated on a single chip, program-controlled device,
which fetches the instructions from memory, decodes and executes the
instructions.

What is Instruction Set?

It is the set of the instructions that the Microprocessor can execute.

What is Clock Speed ?

Clock speed is measured in the MHz and it determines that how many instructions
a processor can processed. The speed of the microprocessor is measured in the
MHz or GHz.

What is Logical Address:?

• A memory address on the 8086 consists of two numbers, usually written in
hexadecimal and separated by a colon, representing the segment and the offset.
This combination of segment and offset is referred to as a logical address
• Logical address=segment: offset

What is The Effective Address:

• In general, memory accesses take the form of the following example:
• Mov ax, [baseReg + indexReg + constant]
• This example copies a word sized value into the register AX.
• Combined, the three parameters in brackets determine what is called the
effective address, which is simply the offset referenced by the instruction

What is Physical Address?

Physical memory address pointed by SEGMENT:OFFSET pair is calculated as:
Physical address = (<Segment Addr> * 10) + <Offset Addr>

What are the flags in 8085?

In 8085 Carry flag, Parity flag, Auxiliary carry flag, Zero flag, and Sign flag.

What happens when HLT instruction is executed in processor?

The Micro Processor enters into Halt-State and the buses are tri-stated.

What is Program counter?

Program counter holds the address of either the first byte of the next instruction to
be fetched for execution or the address of the next byte of a multi byte instruction,
which has not been completely fetched. In both the cases it gets incremented
automatically one by one as the instruction bytes get fetched. Also Program
register keeps the address of the next instruction.

What is 1st / 2nd / 3rd / 4th generation processor?

The processor made of PMOS / NMOS / HMOS / HCMOS technology is called 1st /
2nd / 3rd / 4th generation processor, and it is made up of 4 / 8 / 16 / 32 bits.

How many bit combinations are there in a byte?

Byte contains 8 combinations of bits.

Have you studied buses? What types of Buses are there?

There are three types of buses.
 Address bus: This is used to carry the Address to the memory to fetch either
Instruction or Data.
 Data bus : This is used to carry the Data from the memory.
 Control bus : This is used to carry the Control signals like RD/WR, Select etc.

What is meant by Maskable interrupts?

An interrupt that can be turned off by the programmer is known as Maskable
interrupt.

What is Non-Maskable interrupts?

An interrupt which can be never be turned off (ie. disabled) is known as Non-
Maskable interrupt

What are the different types of Addressing Modes?

A:- There are 12 different types of Addressing Modes.They are:-

<1> Immediate:-The Immediate data is a part of instruction, and appears in the

form of successive bytes.

<2> Direct:-A 16-bit memory address(offset) is directly specified in the instruction

as a part of it.

<3> Register:-Data is stored in a register and it is referred using the particular

register (except IP).

<4> Register Indirect:-The address of the memory location which contains data or
operand is determined in an indirect way.

<5> Indexed:-offset of the operand is stored in one of the index registers.

<6> Register Relative:-The data is available at an eefective address formed by
adding an 8-bit or 16-bit displacement with the content of any one of the registers
BX,BP,SI and DI in the default (either DS or ES) segment.

<7> Based Indexed:-The effective address of the data is formed,in this addressing
mode,by adding content of a base register to the content of an index register.

<8> Relative Based Indexed:- The effective address is formed by adding an 8 or 16-
bit displacement with the sum of contents of any one of the base registers and any
one of the index registers,in the default segment.

<9> Intrasegment Direct Mode:-In this mode,the address to which the control is to
bve transferred lies in the segment in which the control transfer instruction lies
and appears directly in the instruction as an immediate displacement value.

<10> Intrasegment Indirect Mode:-In this mode,the displacement to which the

control is to be transferred,is in the same segment in whgich the control transfer
instruction lies,but it is passed to the instruction indirectly.

<11> Intersegment Direct:-In this mode,the address to which the control is to be

transferred is in a different segment.

<12> Intersegment Indirect:-In this mode,the address to which the control is to be

transferred lies in a different segment and it is passed to the instruction indirectly
sequentially.

What are the General Data Registers & their uses?

A:- The Registers AX,BX,CX,DX are the general Purpose 16-bit registers.AX register
as 16-bit accumulator.BX register is used as an offset Storage.CX register is used as
default or implied counter.Dx register is used as an implicit operand or destination
in case of a few instructions.

What are Segment Registers & their uses?

A:-There are 4 Segment Registers Code Segment(CS),Data Segment(DS),Extra
Segment(ES) & Stack Segment(SS) registers.CS is used for addressing memory
locationin code.DS is used to points the data.ES refers to a segment which is
essentially in another data segment.SS is used fopr addressing stack segment of
memory.
What are Flag registers?
A:-Divided into 2 parts:-Condition code or status flags and machine control flags.
 S-Sign Flag:-Is to set when the result of any computation is negative.
 Z-Zero Flag:-Is to set if the result of the computation or comparision
performed by the previous instruction is zero.
 C-Carry Flag:-Is set when there is carry out of MSB in case of addition or a
borrow in case of subtraction.
 AC-Auxiliary Carry Flag:-Is set if there is a carry from the lowest nibble
during addition or borrow for the lowest nibble.

What are Data Copy/Transfer Instructions?

A:- MOV
PUSH
POP
XCHG
IN
OUT

What are Machine Control Instructions?

NOP
HLT

What is an Interrupt?
Def:- Interrupt is an external signal that causes a microprocessor to jump to a
specific subroutine.
An interrupt operation suspends execution of a program so that the system can
take special action.The interrupt routine executes and normally returns control to
the interrupted procedure, which then resumes execution.BIOS handles Int 00H-
1FH, whereas DOS handles INT 20H-3FH.

What is an Opcode?
A:-The part of the instruction that specifies the operation to be performed is called
the Operation code or Op code.

What is an Operand?
A:-The data on which the operation is to be performed is called as an Operand.

Explain the difference between a JMP and CALL instruction?

A:-A JMP instruction permantely changes the program counter.
A CALL instruction leaves information on the stack so that the original program
execution sequence can be resumed.
What is meant by Polling?
A:- Polling or device Polling is a process which idenfies the device that has
interrupted the microprocessor.

What is an Instruction?
A:-An instruction is a binary pattern enetered through an input device to command
the microprocessor to perform that specific function.

What is Assembler?
A:-The assembler translates the assembly language program text which is given as
input to the assembler to their binary equivalents known as object code.
The time required to translate the assembly code to object code is called access
time.The assembler checks for syntax errors&displays them before giving the
object code.

What is the use of HLDA?

HLDA is the acknowledgment signal for HOLD. It indicates whether the HOLD signal
is received or not.
HOLD and HLDA are used as the control signals for DMA operations.

Explain about "LEA"?

A:-LEA(Load Effective Address) is used for initializing a register with an offset
address.
A common use for LEA is to intialize an offset in BX, DI or SI for indexing an address
in memory.
An equivalent operation to LEA is MOV with the OFFSET operator, which generates
slightly shorter machine code.
Difference between "Shift" and "Rotate".
 A:-Shift and Rotate commands are used to convert a number to another form
where some bits are shifted or rotated.
 A rotate instruction is a closed loop instruction.That is,the data moved out at
one end is put back in at the other end.
 The shift instruction loses the data that is moved out of the last bit locations.
 Basic difference between shift and rotate is shift command makes "fall of " bits
at the end of the register.
 Where rotate command makes "wrap around" at the end of the register.

Difference between JMP and JNC?

A:-JMP is Unconditional Branch.
JNC is Conditional Branch.
What is the main use of ready pin?
A:-READY is used by the microprocessor to check whether a peripheral is ready to
accept or transfer data.
A peripheral may be a LCD display or analog to digital converter or any other.
These peripherals are connected to microprocessor using the READY pin.
If READY is high then the periphery is ready for data transfer. If not the
microprocessor waits until READY goes high.

What are the basic units of a microprocessor?

The basic units or blocks of a microprocessor are ALU, an array of registers and
control unit.