CSE370 Written Assignments

	Date Distributed	Date Due
Assignment 1	Mon, 26 Mar	Mon, 2 April
Assignment 2	Mon, 2 April	Wed, 11 April
Assignment 3	Wed, 11 April	Wed, 18 April
Assignment 4	Wed, 18 April	Wed, 25 April
Assignment 5	Wed, 25 April	Wed, 2 May
Assignment 6	Wed, 2 May	Wed, 9 May
Assignment 7	Wed, 9 May	Wed, 16 May
Assignment 8 (2 weeks)	Wed, 16 May	Wed, 30 May

Guidelines for the homework

Show your work

I know I've told you that you can just write down the answers for the very first question in the very first homework. Now I want to see what you've done. That's better for both of us, since I can give you partial credit if the result is wrong.

If you don't know how to answer a question, the first rule is of course: come and see me. But if that's not possible (1min to deadline?), then show at least that you've thought about the question. Write down something, so that I can give you all completeness credits.

Don't do too much

If a question asks you for a specific answer you should write it down. That's easy enough. Then you might feel the need to do some additional stuff which the question didn't ask, e.g. in preparation to answer the following question. It's okay to do this, but then make clear what answer belongs to which question.

If your final answer isn't the very last thing before you start working on the next question please underline it or mark it otherwise. If I see sth like

42) a) blah, blah... blah

       Answer to part a)(*)

       blah, blah... blah

       blah, preparing part b...

    b) bit more blah...

       Answer to part b)

I don't know if you actually knew that (*) was the answer to 42a) or if it just happens to be in there by accident. So please make that clear in the future.

Schematics

You may use n-input gates without penalty. If we want to minimize something we will only count the number of gates, no matter how many inputs they have. (So doing a (AB)C instead of a ABC won't count as minimal!)

Be careful with your gates! An AND gate looks quite similar to an OR gate. So make sure I can distinguish them. I recommend using ActiveHDL for your schematics and printing them out. (Don't they look nice in my solutions? *g*)

Boolean expressions

If you are asked to do sth with a Boolean expression, but minimization is not required, then do sth reasonable. Inverting F can be done by just drawing a long line on top of whatever is given. That's not enough. You should end up with sth that looks nice (e.g. no multiple NOT lines stacked over each other), but you don't have to find the shortest possible answer if you're not asked for it.

In case you should minimize sth without constraints (e.g. SofP or PofS would be a constraint), then the minimization rule for schematics counts.

K-maps

There are several right ways to draw a K-map. But since I have to correct 50+ homeworks I will only accept the way the book does it. You can refer to my solution to see what minterm belongs where.

Don't rename things! If the book uses A, B, C and your expression contains X, Y, Z, then do a K-map with X, Y, Z. (But still, be careful with the minterm ordering.) You should show that you can apply what you've learned to different problems, not that you're able to fill out a table.

Comments to: cse370-webmaster@cs.washington.edu