Introduction - Java Software Solutions: Foundations of Program Design - page 19

and communication sockets to which device controllers, such as the controller
that manages the video display, can be connected.
Another crucial component of the main circuit board is the system clock. The
clock generates an electronic pulse at regular intervals, which synchronizes the events
of the CPU. The rate at which the pulses occur is called the clock speed, and it varies
depending on the processor. The computer described in Figure 1.8 includes an Intel
Core i7 processor that runs at a clock speed of 3.07 gigahertz (GHz), or approxi-
mately 3.1 billion pulses per second. The speed of the system clock provides a rough
measure of how fast the CPU executes instructions. Similar to storage capacities, the
speed of processors is constantly increasing with advances in technology.

SELF-REVIEW QUESTIONS (see answers in Appendix N)
SR 1.7 How many bytes are in each of the following?

a. 3 KB
b. 2 MB
c. 4 GB

SR 1.8 How many bits are there in each of the following?

a. 8 bytes
b. 2 KB
c. 4 MB

SR 1.9 The music on a CD is created using a sampling rate of 44,000 mea-
surements per second. Each measurement is stored as a number that
represents a specific voltage level. Suppose each of these numbers
requires two bytes of storage space. How many MB does it take to
represent one hour of music?
SR 1.10 What are the two primary hardware components in a computer? How
do they interact?
SR 1.11 What is a memory address?
SR 1.12 What does volatile mean? Which memory devices are volatile and
which are nonvolatile?
SR 1.13 Select the word from the following list that best matches each of the
following phrases:

controller, CPU, main, network card, peripheral, RAM, register,
ROM, secondary

a. Almost all devices in a computer system, other than the CPU and
the main memory, are categorized as this.