Module 1 Final Quiz: Introduction to Operating Systems MCQs

1

What is the primary role of an Operating System as an intermediary?

A. To execute user programs directly in physical memory without abstraction

B. To act as an interface between user applications and bare hardware, managing hardware resources efficiently and securely

C. To compile high-level source code into native binary machine instructions

D. To serve as a database management system for non-volatile storage

2

Which mechanism allows the CPU to switch from User Mode to Kernel Mode?

A. A software trap or hardware interrupt that flips the CPU mode bit from 1 to 0

B. A simple function pointer jump in the application memory space

C. A polling loop run by the device driver

D. A compiler optimization flag

3

Why can user-mode applications NOT execute privileged instructions (such as disabling interrupts or modifying page tables)?

A. Because user-mode processes run on a slower auxiliary processor

B. Because the CPU hardware detects the mode bit and triggers a general protection fault if a privileged opcode is executed in User Mode

C. Because compilers remove all privileged instructions during compilation

D. Because privileged instructions only exist in 32-bit architecture

4

What is the defining architectural characteristic of a Microkernel (e.g., QNX, seL4, Mach)?

A. All OS services (file systems, networking, drivers) run in privileged kernel space

B. Only minimal core services (IPC, low-level scheduling, basic memory management) run in kernel space; other services run as user-space daemons communicating via IPC

C. It eliminates the concept of system calls and processes

D. It cannot support multitasking or preemptive scheduling

5

What is the major performance trade-off associated with Microkernels compared to Monolithic kernels?

A. Microkernels consume significantly more disk storage

B. Microkernels incur heavy IPC message-passing overhead and frequent context switches between user-space servers

C. Microkernels cannot handle multi-core CPU architectures

D. Microkernels have slower clock speeds

6

Which of the following is an example of a Hard Real-Time Operating System?

A. General purpose desktop Linux running audio playback

B. FreeRTOS or VxWorks controlling an automotive ABS braking system or pacemaker

C. Windows 11 displaying a video conference stream

D. macOS managing background cloud backups

7

How does a system call pass arguments to the OS kernel when there are more arguments than available CPU registers?

A. The system call fails with an overflow error

B. Arguments are stored in a memory block or table, and the address of that block is passed in a CPU register (or pushed onto the stack)

C. The CPU dynamically allocates new physical registers

D. Arguments are written directly into the kernel's ROM

8

What is the difference between a trap and a hardware interrupt?

A. A trap is an asynchronous signal from an I/O device; an interrupt is synchronous

B. A trap is a synchronous software-generated interrupt caused by an instruction (error or system call); an interrupt is an asynchronous signal generated by external hardware

C. Traps only happen in monolithic kernels; interrupts happen in microkernels

D. There is no difference; the terms are exact synonyms in OS theory

9

Which OS design approach combines monolithic performance with microkernel extensibility through dynamically loadable modules?

A. Simple uniprogrammed architecture

B. Loadable Kernel Module (LKM) architecture (as used in Linux)

C. Pure hardware emulation architecture

D. Static ROM architecture

10

What is the role of the Interrupt Vector Table (IVT)?

A. It stores the list of user processes currently waiting in the ready queue

B. It is an array of memory addresses pointing to specific Interrupt Service Routines (ISRs) indexed by interrupt number

C. It holds the physical page frames allocated to the kernel

D. It maps file names to physical disk sectors

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