CPE 315
Professor Stearns
Winter 2008
Examination #1 Announcement

The first examination will be held on Tuesday, Jan. 29 during lecture time.

This exam is designed to test the prerequisite knowledge from previous courses; the exam will cover the following material.

Hexadecimal addition and subtraction
Patterson & Hennessey Appendix B (assigned reading and lecture material)
The memory circuit discussed in lecture on Jan 22.
Homework #1 and #2
Lab Project #1 (concepts only - no SIM questions)
The examination is closed book except you may bring one 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper with notes (copies of class handouts or notes written in your own handwriting )
You must clearly show your work to receive any credit on a problem; the correct answer alone is worth 0 points.
You may not use a calculator, cell phone or digital pen on this examination.
Bring one colored pen/highlighter to the exam.
On essay questions, avoid use of bad words.

To prepare for the exam, be sure you can:

  1. Do all the problems on the practice test.

  2. Add and subtract 8 bit integers (unsigned and 2's complement); compute the C and V bits; convert numbers from hex to decimal.
    Be sure you understand how the mips alu does addition and subtraction.
    Note: you must do the work in hex; binary work is explicitly disallowed.

  3. Write the truth table and boolean equations for a digital component (adder, multiplexor, etc) covered in Appendix B. And explain the purpose of all the common digital components (Decoder, Mux, Register, Adder, Shifter, Latch, ROM, PLA, etc)

  4. Color buses and signals used in the mips alu and the memory circuit covered in lecture.
    You will be asked to color the signals/busses used for a specific operation e.g. (subtract b-a in the mips alu)

  5. Design digital circuits (both combinatorial and sequential)
    Be sure you can clearly show and explain your design steps.
    Sequential circuits will use D flip flops.
    Note: a circuit is not a design; be sure you understand how to represent a circuit design properly.

  6. Answer some essay questions on the concepts in Appendix B. Samples:
    What's the purpose of a DON'T CARE in digital logic?
    What's is a PLA used for in digital logic?
    What's the difference between a PLA and a ROM?
    Explain why a ROM isn't a memory?

Last updated on 1/25/08