Questions

1.) What is the most basic form of networking a handheld computer to a desktop computer?

2.) What is the best networking technology for handhelds?

3.) What networking technology for handhelds uses existing cellular networks?

4.) Name two issues involved in powering handhelds?

5.) How long can a PDA run on 2 AAA batteries?

6.) How many pipeline stages does the PDA processor have? How about the Pentium III?

7.) How much memory does a standard PDA have? What kind? What is it for?

8.) Diagram what you think the stages of a Pentium III pipeline look like. (Remember, the Pentium III is 3-way superscalar, and employs register-renaming. This will come in handy for problem 9.)

9.) Compare your Pentium III pipeline to the PDA's two stage pipeline (Fetch and Execute). Run the following lines of code through the pipelines:

LW R1, #8(R0)
ADDI R2, R1,#20
SUB R2,R2,R1

(Make your own assumption about how many clock cycles a PDA EX stage takes. For the Pentium III use the latencies in the book.) 

10.) Now using problem 9 which is faster? Average Pentium III clock rate: 500MHz. Average PDA clock rate: 16Mhz.



Answers

1.) Serial Cable

2.) Depends. If you only need to back up your handheld, the in-the-box serial connection will do fine. However, if you portable internet access over an entire metropolitan city, go with CDPD.

3.) CDPD

4.) a.) Needs to be portable. b.) Cannot give off too much heat. c.) Needs to be as energy efficient as possible to decrease weight associated with batteries.

5.) 2 months with typical use

6.) PDA has 2. Pentium III has 14.

7.) A PDA has 10 MB of memory. 2MB of ROM memory for the OS and standard programs; 8MB of RAM for general use.

8.) Results may vary.

9.) Results may vary.

10.) The actual time computed may vary but the Pentium should be faster by a considerable amount.