With today’s technology and changing environment of computing, resources for inf

Question

With today’s technology and changing environment of computing, resources for
information processing has taken on a new meaning and dimension. Almost all
computer installations are now “linked” to the Internet. Invariably such links has
caused concern for many companies. We are now looking at the upgrade of computer
systems at World Computers Inc. The company is a traditionalist in information
privacy, security and the application of new technologies. You are now a member of
this powerful team to turn the computing resources and scope into the modern arena.

QUESTION:

a. What hardware requisition would give the kind of environment that the
company has always operated on and blending into the new technology age.
[25 marks]

Explanation / Answer

As of my knowladge, now a days many aplications those will get installed in systems demanding more robust hardware. CPU processing, RAM and Cache usage are the key factors and playing vital role in the present compitative environment.

So we have to choose the configuration in such a way that it would process the application which is beong installed for the business purpose would get executed faster and in time. So mainly the following hardware is needed to move the systems into present era.

    1) Micro processor whcih supports multithreading and multi tasking

    2) RAM(randon access memory) should be more to store temporary to data for fast access

    3) Cache memory as part of RAM to cache the internet pages and reduce the waiting time

The followning two factors shows big impact on CPU and cache performance

Clock doubling in the CPU

The problem with the high clock frequencies is to ensure that other electronic components keep up
with the pace. It is rather simple to make data move very fast inside a chip where the print tracks
are microscopic. But when we move outside the chip, other problems appear. The other
components must be able to keep up with the pace. When the frequency gets too high, the circuit
board print tracks start acting as antennae and various forms of "radio noise" appears. Briefly, it
becomes expensive to make the rest of the hardware to keep up with these high frequencies.
The solution to this problem was to split the clock frequency in two:
A high internal clock frequency, which governs the pace of the CPU.
A lower external clock frequency, which governs the pace on the system bus. This is where
the CPU exchanges data with RAM and the I/O units.
Intel's 80486DX2 25/50 MHZ was the first chip with clock doubling. It was introduced in 1992 with
great potential. For a lower price you could acquire a chip, which provided 90% of the 486DX50
performance. The DX50 runs at 50 MHZ both internally and externally. The DX2 runs at just 25
MHZ on the system bus. This enables lower cost system boards. Also RAM speed demands are
much lower.
Clock doubling occurs inside the CPU. If the system board crystal works at 25 MHZ, the CPU will
receive a signal every 40 nanosecond (ns). Internally in the CPU, this frequency is doubled to 50
MHZ. Now the clock ticks every 20 ns inside the CPU. This frequency governs all internal
transactions, including integer unit, floating point unit, and all memory management unit operations
as well as others. The only area still working at 25 MHZ are external data transfers. That is
transfers to RAM, BIOS and the I/O ports.
Today the speed problem is in RAM. The ordinary FPM RAM and EDO RAM can function at a
maximum of 66 MHZ (possibly 75 MHZ). Therefore, Pentium and similar CPU's are "clocked up"
2-4 times internally. They work well at high frequencies like 166, 200, 233 and 266 MHZ.

About CPU cache RAM:

The CPU must deliver its data at a very high speed. The regular RAM can not keep up with that
speed. Therefore, a special RAM type called cache is used as a buffer - temporary storage. To get
top performance from the CPU, the number of outgoing transactions must be minimized. The more
data transmissions, which can be contained inside the CPU, the better the performance.

the 486 was equipped with a built in mathematical co-processor, floating point unit and 8 KB
L1-cache RAM. These two features help minimize the data flow in and out of the CPU.
Cache RAM becomes especially important in clock doubled CPU's, where internal clock frequency
is much higher than external. Then the cache RAM enhances the "horsepower" of the CPU, by
allowing faster receipt or delivery of data. Beginning with 486 processors, two layers of cache are
employed. The fastest cache RAM is inside the CPU. It is called L1 cache. The next layer is the L2
cache, which are small SRAM chips on the system board.

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