📝 Performance of I/O Systems

📖 From Operating System • 13. I/O Systems • 21 questions available

Practice MCQs for Performance of I/O Systems. Test your knowledge with carefully crafted questions across easy, medium, and hard difficulty levels.

🔄 Last updated: 2026-07-27

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📝 Sample Questions

Q1. A program writes characters to a terminal (character‑stream device) and large blocks to a disk (block device). Which reason best explains why the terminal output appears immediately while disk writes may be delayed?

🔹 A. A Both devices buffer data equally, but the terminal flushes faster.

🔹 B. B Terminals transfer data byte‑by‑byte with low latency, whereas disks write whole blocks, incurring seek and rotational delay.

🔹 C. C Disk writes are synchronous while terminal writes are asynchronous.

🔹 D. D The terminal uses a dedicated channel, but the disk is sharable.

💡 Difficulty: easy | ✅ Correct: B

Q2. A database server stores records on a disk that supports both read‑only and read‑write modes. Which access convention most efficiently supports random record retrieval without copying data into user space?

🔹 A. A Block I/O with sequential reads.

🔹 B. B Character‑stream I/O.

🔹 C. C Memory‑mapped file access.

🔹 D. D Network sockets.

💡 Difficulty: medium | ✅ Correct: A

Q3. A file server uses a dedicated disk for write‑intensive workloads. Which statement best explains why a dedicated device is chosen over a sharable one?

🔹 A. A Dedicated devices have lower latency because they are not contended.

🔹 B. B Sharable devices cannot perform block I/O.

🔹 C. C Dedicated devices support asynchronous transfers.

🔹 D. D Sharable devices are always character‑stream devices.

💡 Difficulty: hard | ✅ Correct: B

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🔗 Related Topics

📝 Overview of I/O Systems 📝 I/O Hardware in I/O Systems 📝 Polling in I/O Hardware 📝 Interrupts in I/O Hardware 📝 Direct memory access in I/O Hardware

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