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CO527 Anonymous Questions and Answers |
This page lists the various questions and answers. To submit a question, use the anonymous questions page. You may find the keyword index and/or top-level index useful for locating past questions and answers.
We have taken the liberty of making some minor typographical corrections to some of the questions as originally put. Although most of the questions here will have been submitted anonymously, this page also serves to answer some questions of general interest to those on the course.
Submission reference: IN1273
This is a test question for 2007.
And this is a test answer!
Submission reference: IN1288
Hello could you please tell me if there is a lot of programming with this course?
In previous years, the coursework did involve programming. However, this year it will not, at least not directly. Unfortunately, and somewhat worryingly, the programming ability of some students half-way through stage 2 (or 3 for some) is just not up to scratch. It should be noted that programming is a core aspect of Computer Science, and highly relevant for Electronic Engineering (as most embedded systems these days involve some microprocessor programmed in C or assembly).
Keywords: coursework
Submission reference: IN1290
Hi, is there any chance that a PDF version of an assignment cover sheet could be uploaded to the department web-site so we can pick up a copy remotely?
You can download the cover sheet here: CAS-cover-sheet.pdf.
Keywords: coursework
Submission reference: IN1291
Hello Dr Barnes, just wanted to ask... do you have a little or big-endian? All in good fun, loving CS students
My PCs are little-endian, SGI Indy is also little-endian, SGI Octane-2 is big-endian :-).
Submission reference: IN1298
Hi Fred, I am not sure if I was hallucinating due to lack of food - did you say that the on-line quiz's would have a mark deducted for each wrong answer ?!! Also, would it be possible to tell us more about the test format / content please? For instance,
And anything else you think might be relevant or helpful would be good. Many thanks. Anonymouse.
Hi, the quiz isn't quite finalised yet, but in answer to your questions (and maybe subject to change!):
As you can re-take as many times as you like, a reasonable approach would be to attempt it once without doing any pre-reading, use the scores to discover what your weak areas are, remedy those by reading up on the relevant material, and then re-take the test. E.g.:
void my_quiz (void)
{
int score = take_test ();
while (score < happy_with_mark) {
do_more_learning ();
score = take_test ();
}
}
The questions you'll get will differ each time, and some questions are harder than others (which is taken into account when scoring and setting the questions).
Keywords: coursework
Submission reference: IN1307
Fred mentioned that he might put the Auto-Question source code up for us to try and find bugs in -- has this been done, and if so, where is it?
Yes, it is available. I've added a link to the assessment page.
Keywords: coursework
Submission reference: IN1316
Hi there, I hope this doesn't make me sound stupid, though luckily this is an anonymous page! But I'm a bit confused when it comes to the "threads" in operating systems, since everything with multi threading and programs having "more than one thread". I'm totally off base, what is it they actually are? I thought originally they were the connection of programs, but i can't seem to find any of my notes which tell me!
The OS lecture 2-4 should give you a good overview of what processes are (with their virtual memories, virtual machines and the like). Threads are similar, except that they share virtual memory. Essentially a process may be single-threaded, where it has only 1 thread (the process itself), or multi-threaded, where a single (conceptual) process has multiple threads all operating in the same VM. However, the OS treats threads in largely the same way as processes -- they are just schedule-able items in the run-queue, but with some extra considerations when scheduling for performance (retaining the contents of the processor cache, for instance).
The various recommended textbooks for the module will describe threading in detail, although having flicked through a couple, in more detail than is probably required for this module. Unless you've actually programmed with threads (either in C, C++, C#, Java, etc.), some of the concepts are likely to remain somewhat abstract. But this is CS, and it can be complicated! Operating systems doubly so.
Submission reference: IN1317
for the quiz what is the grade that we get. the grade of the last quiz or the highest grade from all attempts?
I'm not going to answer that here :-). Read the words put in front of you! (assessment page and as you start the quiz).
Keywords: coursework
Submission reference: IN1367
Is the the best limerick you've ever read?
A programmer started to cuss Because getting to sleep was a fuss As he lay there in bed Looping 'round in his head was: while(!asleep()) sheep++;
Probably not the best I've seen, but pretty good nevertheless :-).
Keywords: funnies
Submission reference: IN1393
Will there be any past exam papers available for this module?
Yes, and they have been for a long time! See this page: http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk.chain.kent.ac.uk/teaching/exams/.
Keywords: exams
What topics will be covered in the revision sessions?
For operating-systems:
For architecture:
Keywords: revision-session
Submission reference: IN1410
Can you explain please what the "v" stands for in the expression "-ve/+ve offset". Thank you.
This is scientific short-hand (of sorts). "-ve" means "negative" and "+ve" means "positive". So "-ve/+ve offset" means "negative or positive offset".
Submission reference: IN1414
Going back to basics ... In Lecture 6, page 7 (Final memory layout) could you please confirm if there is quick way of comparing the memory addresses without having to translate into decimal. This came up in the test didn't it. Am I missing something here? I honestly thought I was listening in the lecture ....
Comparing numbers in hexadecimal (base-16) is the same as comparing after conversion to decimal (base-10). The only difference is that you have to take into account that after 0 through 9, come 'a' through 'f' (because there are only 10 numeric digits, need to use letters for the others). So "0xaff" is greater than "0xaf0", "0x300" is less than "0x400", etc.
The questions that came up in the on-line test did involve some of this -- i.e. finding out which particular region an address is from. But this should be straightforward (see above), no need to convert everything to decimal first!
Keywords: memory-management
Submission reference: IN1411
I've hunted through the notes, but can't see what the letters in the following equation actually stand for. Can you help please ?
In a pipelined architecture, the speedup factor is given by the equation:
S = n*k*t/(k*t + (n-1)*t)
See the answers to Question 204 (2006) and Question 205 (2006).
Keywords: architecture , speed-up-factor
Submission reference: IN1413
[snip]
Also, a definition of MSB (which results in the values 00, 01, 10 or 11) would be appreciated.
What exactly do you mean by MSB? My interpretation would be "most significant byte", which is probably not what you mean.
Keywords: revision-session
Submission reference: IN1417
Pleases cover any topics that will be in the exam, both Operating Systems and Architecture. Thanks.
Anything lectured on is examinable, but we don't have time to cover everything.. :-). The idea is that you can use the revision session to fill in gaps in your understanding (as well as asking specific questions on these anonymous Q+A pages). The revision session is not just supposed to be a re-iteration of previous lectures -- that's what the lectures were for!
Keywords: revision-session
Submission reference: IN1430
Looking at past exam papers, what topics which were removed from the OS part since 2006-2007, and what topics were added?
Things that were in the module in 2006-2007, but have since been removed were:
And new things added:
This is possibly not an exhaustive list, but if anyone spots anything missing, please let me know!
Keywords: exam
Referrers: Question 24 (2007)
Submission reference: IN1431
I have been revising for CO527 and some things about NUR algorithm are not clear. Can you please make the animations shown in the lectures available to download?
Certainly, now online, downloadable here (lecture 10 PDF).
Keywords: memory-management
Submission reference: IN1432
Could you add the rest of the recordings on Fred's lectures to the web page. Thanks.
All of my lecture recordings (Fred's) are on the web-page; the other OS lectures were given by Bob.
Keywords: lectures
Submission reference: IN1409
Hi, having completed my last test I am keen to know what my overall score is :-).
What is the magic formula to find this out as the scores are weighted? Could I please have the way to do it rather than just an answer? Many thanks.
The individual coursework weightings are detailed in the SDS here. Overall, coursework counts for 20% of the module. Generating a final number shouldn't be too hard: multiply weights by your scores, sum them, and take 20%. Bear in mind that coursework weightings are not necessarily final at this stage, though I don't expect them to change.
Keywords: coursework
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Maintained by Fred Barnes, last modified Thu May 8 12:58:00 2014 |
