Exams

Quiz Policies

Quizzes will be given during the final 15 minutes of selected lectures; five minutes to prepare the room and pass out the quizzes, and ten minutes allotted for the actual exam time. We will note what time the quiz begins, when it ends, and the TAs and instructor will collect your quiz when leaving the lecture hall.

To account for "off" days, sicknesses, and/or extenuating circumstances, we will drop your lowest performing quiz score. Please note that quiz make-ups will not be offered due to this policy.

• You can schedule to take your quiz at the DRS testing center with your accommodations-allowed extra time. You cannot take it with extra accommodations-allowed time during the lecture.
• If you have taken your DRS-scheduled quiz already by the time your lecture section starts, you are welcome to leave as we prepare to start the quiz.

It is necessary that you bring your Husky card or other ID to lecture. The TAs and instructor may check IDs during the quiz proctoring.

You must take quizzes in the lecture section for which you are registered, either Section A or B. You may not attend another lecture section.

Note that we will be scanning your completed quizzes and uploading them to Gradescope, so make sure to use writing utensils that will be legible in scans (e.g., a normal graphite pencil, dark blue or black ink, not a light colored pen or pencil).

You are to keep the quiz sheet upside down until time is called to start. To turn over the sheet before the quiz begins will be considered an academic honesty violation.

If you arrive late to lecture, it is possible that you will not have the full time to complete the quiz. You will not be allowed to complete the quiz after lecture has ended, even if you have not been working for the full 10 minutes.

If you finish the quiz early, please stay seated until the end time is called. Once you submit your work, you will not be able to return and continue working on the quiz.

Quiz versions will be randomly generated from a set of equivalent-difficulty questions that test the same learning objectives. There is no benefit to taking the quiz in Section A compared to Section B, or vice versa.

Quiz Logistics

Please be sure that the answer you want graded is clearly indicated. This is particularly important if you provide more than one answer or if you have notes in addition to your final answer. You can draw a box or circle around the answer you want graded, and you can draw an “X” through anything that you do not want to have graded. When in doubt, we will grade the first response written in the indicated space.

Once you start the quiz, we will expect you to finish it. Problems reported to us after you have started a quiz or after your quiz is over may not be able to be accommodated.

Your solutions to the quizzes must be entirely your own work and you may not actively collaborate on quiz solutions.

You may not discuss quiz problems or solutions until both lecture sections are completed (typically after 3:30pm), regardless of whether or not you have completed your quiz. This includes making posts about quiz problems on the course message board. After both lecture sections for the day are complete, you are welcome to discuss the quiz with your classmates and/or ask questions on the message board.

Violations of these policies will be treated as a violation of our academic honesty policy. Violations will, at a minimum, be reported to Community Standards & Student Conduct.

• To Bring: student ID, writing utensil, eraser, TI-30X IIS scientific calculator (optional)
• Provided: printed exam with white space for work and a quiz-dedicated reference sheet, time keeping
  • Countdown timer and exam clarifications will be projected in the lecture hall
• Not Allowed: outside reference sheets, books, printed notes, cell phone (silence and put away), watches, AI/AR glasses, hats, graphing calculator, or any other electronic device (unless specifically allowed by an approved accommodation)

Midterm Policies

You will have 70 minutes to complete the exam. You will be asked to check in with a specific staff member early in the exam room to receive a copy of the exam. You can read and fill out the cover page of the exam, but you should not look at the exam questions until you are told to begin.

• To Bring: student ID, pencil, eraser, ONE 8.5" x 11" double-sided sheet of handwritten notes (these must be written by hand on paper, not written on an electronic device and printed out), TI-30X IIS scientific calculator (optional)
• Provided: midterm reference sheet [PDF], printed exam with white space for work, time keeping
  • Countdown timer and exam clarifications will be projected in the lecture hall
• Not Allowed: books, printed notes, cell phone (silence and put away), watches, AI/AR glasses, hats, graphing calculator, or any other electronic device (unless specifically allowed by an approved accommodation)

Midterm Topics

• Memory, Data, and Addressing: pointers, endianness, data sizes, bitwise operators
• Number Representation: binary, integers, floating point
• x86-64 Topics: registers, instructions, control flow
• Procedures and the Stack: stack structure, calling conventions, register conventions, recursion
• Building an Executable: compiling, linking, loading
• Arrays and Structs: alignment, fragmentation, buffer overflow

Any topics from the beginning of the course not explicitly stated as not tested on (see slides) and up to LC15 is fair game.

Some of the old exams may contain questions on topics that we did not cover before the midterm this quarter; you should skip over such questions.

Midterm Practice

Past Midterm Exam Database

Final Policies

While the majority of the exam will be on topics covered since the midterm, topics from before the midterm will also be on the final exam.

You will have 110 minutes to complete the exam. We will distribute the exam early and you can read and fill out the cover page of the exam, but you should not look at the exam questions until you are told to begin.

• To Bring: student ID, pencil, eraser, TWO double-sided sheets of handwritten notes (these must be written by hand on paper, not written on an electronic device and printed out), TI-30X IIS scientific calculator (optional)
• Provided: final reference sheet [PDF], printed exam with white space for work, time keeping
  • Countdown timer and exam clarifications will be projected in the lecture hall
• Not Allowed: books, printed notes, cell phone (silence and put away), watches, AI/AR glasses, hats, graphing calculator, or any other electronic device (unless specifically allowed by an approved accommodation)

Final Topics (non-cumulative)

• Buffer Overflow
• Caching: locality, cache parameters and policies, performance, code analysis
• Dynamic Memory Allocation: allocation and deallocation (fragmentation, coalescing, policies), allocator implementation details (heap block organization, free lists), garbage collection, memory bugs
• Processes: fork, execv, exceptions, context switching, zombies
• Virtual Memory: paging, address translation, disk and swap space, protection and sharing
• C and Java: comparisons, object representation, dynamic dispatch

Some of the old exams contain questions on topics that we did not cover this quarter; you should skip over such questions.

Final Practice

Past Final Exam Database