The Internal Manager
This is the constant checking of an external device's status by the CPU—a less efficient alternative to an interrupt.
What is Polling?
This device is used to measure a physical property, such as temperature or light, and convert it into an electrical signal.
What is a Sensor?
If a sensor sends data too quickly for the CPU to handle, this Topic 6 resource becomes the primary "bottleneck."
What is Processor Speed (or CPU cycles)?
This type of system spreads the processing power across many autonomous nodes rather than one central hub.
What is a Distributed System?
In an automated washing machine, this sensor is used to determine if the clothes are still damp.
What is a Moisture (or Humidity) Sensor?
This signal is emitted by hardware to tell the CPU to stop its current task and handle a high-priority event immediately.
What is an Interrupt?
This output device is responsible for moving or controlling a mechanism, such as opening a valve or turning a motor.
What is an Actuator?
In a centralized heating system, if this specific component fails, the entire building's climate control stops working.
What is the Central Processor (or Centralized Controller)?
This satellite-based system allows a control system to determine its exact location on Earth.
What is GPS?
This is a social impact of replacing human-operated toll booths with automated sensor-based systems.
What is Technological Unemployment (or Job Loss)?
This memory management scheme uses fixed-size blocks to swap data between primary and secondary storage.
What is Paging?
This term describes a system that is hidden inside a larger device (like a microwave or car) to perform a fixed task.
What is an Embedded System?
This is the process where the output of a system is used as input to control the next action (e.g., a thermostat).
What is a Feedback Loop?
This is a major advantage of a distributed system: if one node fails, the rest of the network continues to function.
What is Redundancy (or Fault Tolerance)?
To prevent a multi-user mainframe from crashing, the OS must carefully manage this limited internal resource.
What is RAM (or Primary Memory)?
This OS technique gives each process a tiny "quantum" of time to make it appear as if multiple programs are running at once.
What is Time Slicing?
Because a computer cannot understand continuous physical signals, this component is needed to convert them into 1s and 0s.
What is an ADC (Analog-to-Digital Converter)?
This is the stage in a control loop where the microprocessor compares a sensor reading against a "Pre-set Value."
What is the Comparison (or Processing) stage?
This is the software "bridge" that allows an OS to recognize and control a new sensor or actuator.
What is a Device Driver?
This control device converts digital signals from a computer into analog sounds we can hear.
What is a DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter)?
This is the primary consequence of an OS spending more time swapping data between RAM and the Hard Drive than actually executing code.
What is Thrashing?
This specific type of system must provide a guaranteed response within a strict time limit, often used in airbags or nuclear plants.
What is a Real-Time System?
This issue arises when we rely on automated control systems to make ethical decisions, such as in self-driving cars.
What is Algorithmic Bias (or the "Moral Machine" problem)?
This is the term for a software entity that can "perceive" its environment and act to reach a goal without human help.
What is an Autonomous Agent?
This specific limitation of a cell phone's hardware requires its OS to be much more aggressive with resource management than a desktop.
What is Battery Life (or Power Consumption)?