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CO527 Anonymous Questions and Answers Keyword Index |
This page provides a keyword index to questions and answers. Clicking on a keyword will take you to a page containing all questions and answers for that keyword, grouped by year.
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.
Keyword reference for exam
2014 |
Submission reference: IN3681
If we answer more than the specified questions in the exam, how will the marks be worked out please?
The general policy is that we'll mark all questions answered and give you the best mark possible under the rubric. However, the time limit in the exam means that you should probably aim to answer fewer questions well, rather than all questions mediocre/poorly. Section A of the exam contains 50 marks, but will be capped at 40 marks regardless. Section B contains 3 questions of which you should answer 2. These are 20 mark questions, so better to do two of these well, rather than 3 badly (since you'll only get the marks for the best 2).
Keywords: exam
2013 |
Submission reference: IN2997
Am I right in saying, lecture 1 (Introduction, Electricity and Semiconductors) is not examinable, and everything after is?
Yes, rather the material on those things though, as there may have been other things in that lecture. Similarly there's some semiconductor stuff in lecture 2 which isn't examinable either.
Keywords: exam
Referrers: Question 121 (2013)
Submission reference: IN2994
Will the 8-bit timer/ USART device be examined, as they seem to be things more relevant to the AVR than a general understanding of the architecture. And if so, will we need to know specifics or would a general understanding of them be acceptable?
I'm not going to ask questions such as "describe the function and purpose of the UBRH I/O register", but would expect a general understanding of UARTs or timers in general (broadly, the sorts of hardware units you're likely to find in microcontroller). Things like this fall into both categories though: architecture and operating-systems (the latter of which has to provide some software interface to these sorts of things through device-drivers and similar).
Keywords: exam
Submission reference: IN2993
In the exam could there be questions related to electricity?
No. Neither is the material on building logic gates, flip-flops, adders, etc. out of transistors, but I would expect you to understand what these things are and what they do (e.g. as part of a diagram).
Keywords: exam
Submission reference: IN2991
In the exam will we have to write assembly code?
No [1]. I would expect you to be able to read and understand simple assembler programs however (as per the mock architecture questions).
[1] If we were to ask this sort of question, it would be very "light" (as in, here's some slightly broken code, fix it). But that's extremely unlikely.
Keywords: exam
Submission reference: IN2928
In the mock paper what does the JEnb signal do?
This is just an enable signal, "jump enable" in this case. The idea is that the comparator wouldn't look at its input, nor drive its output, until this signal goes high — i.e. the comparator should only be active at certain stages, not all the time.
Keywords: exam , architecture
Submission reference: IN2925
For the mock paper that was put up I was looking at the first part of question 2, am I right in thinking that the initial value 0x0200 is a relative jump forward 512? If so how would you work out the next instruction after 0x0FF0? Just add 1 bit?
Not quite — 0x0200 is the address where the instruction resides (i.e. the current program counter value). The instruction itself is 0x0FF0: i.e. this is the value that appeared on the dashed line in the diagram, part of which goes to the "sign-extend" unit, the comparator and anything else (not shown). From knowing what the instruction is, you need to figure out what happens with each of the internal components, and as a result, what the new program counter value will be. The question in this case asks you to "describe the sequence of actions", so you should be specific about what happens and when (part of the when is given in the question by the analyzer trace, which tells you how the internal components are orchestrated).
Keywords: architecture , exam
Submission reference: IN2900
Will specific knowledge of the Arduino or assembly programmed be needed for the exam?
Yes, but more general knowledge about architecture and assembly programming. I'm in the process of preparing some "mock" questions on the new architecture content.
Submission reference: IN2896
Will electronic things such as diodes come up in the exam?
Not directly, no. However, having an understanding of how a processor works, in terms of functional units, clocks and other signals, needs at least some knowledge about the electrical signals involved (mostly whether they are logically 0 or 1, physically Vss or Vdd).
Keywords: exam , electronics
Submission reference: IN2810
For the operating systems exam will we have to do the things that we are doing in assessment 6?
No, and it wouldn't make sense to either — you do not have extensive file-system documentation on-hand, and the coursework takes hours; the exam has to be done in 2! But that doesn't mean filing-systems (as a topic) would be absent from the exam, of course.
Keywords: exam
2012 |
Submission reference: IN2396
Hello, there is a question in the papers:
What 2 operations are typically performed by the FLIH?
After discussing it with a few people, some are saying the answer is polling and interrupts others are saying acknowledging them and adding latency?
I'm confused to what the answer is now? Thanks !
Assuming the question is worth 2 marks, the first answer would score 0 and the second 1. The first answer is indicative of confusion (not understanding what polling and interrupts are, or how they are used). The second is a bit wooly, and again, doesn't demonstrate a great understanding of the concepts being examined (and is wrong in its second point).
What you should have, from CO324 and CO527, is a basic understanding of how the OS finds out about changes in hardware status: it either polls the hardware for changes (polling, a software-only activity largely) or uses the platform provided interrupt mechanism (hardware and software). From that, the first answer is clearly meaningless in this context as it's answering a different question (e.g. "In what two ways can the OS discover changes in hardware state?"). This question is, though, specifically asking about the first-level interrupt handler (FLIH). From its name, it can be inferred that this is the (low-level) part of the OS that handles interrupts when they are generated by devices (or internally for software interrupts and exceptions). Your mind should then think about what might need to happen, or what else might be involved, and it's good to think about the why to guide your answer (e.g. why is an interrupt happening? -- because some hardware status has changed). There are actually (roughly) 3 things that the FLIH may need to do, depending on the situation, but I'm only after two of them for this question. As well as acknowledging the interrupt, the FLIH may well need to inform the rest of the OS (e.g. to unblock a waiting process or similar).
Keywords: exam
Submission reference: IN2395
Hello, for Q1 do we need to do each part on a separate sheet because I assume its marked by the professor who assigned the part of Q1? If so that's just a waste of paper.
From the instructions, "answer each question in a separate booklet", so do that -- i.e. the whole of Q1 goes into one booklet. Do not try and second-guess how things will be processed following the exam :-). But do answer each question in a separate book, even if you attempt a question then change your mind, use a new answer sheet/booklet.
Keywords: exam
Submission reference: IN2391
For revision purposes, is there anyway that you could make the questions used in the assessment 5 quiz available to us? I understand if you cannot due to possible coursework resits or reuse of the questions in the future, however I thought I would ask anyhow.
Yes, this is something we have done in the past. I've made a different "revision" quiz available; details on the Moodle page.
Keywords: exam
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Maintained by Fred Barnes, last modified Wed May 25 15:07:20 2016 |
