Contents

ISA Exam Overview

Distribution, Work, and Submission

Take the following steps when you are ready to begin the exam.

Download the exam:

  1. Review the policy on Allowed Resources.
  2. In Gradescope, click the CS 240 course and find the Dashboard.
  3. Click the ISA Exam assignment. It will show a prompt with a link to Download the ISA Exam PDF (and access to upload your submission). Download the exam PDF.

Work on the exam:

  • Option 1: Print the exam (it is 2-sided-friendly) and write with pencil or pen on the printed copy. When you are done, use a scanner or a scanning app with a phone’s camera to scan your completed paper exam as a PDF. Please include all pages in the original order. This may take several minutes.
  • Option 2: Mark the PDF directly using the software and device of your choice.

Submit the exam:

Once you have a PDF of your completed exam, log in to Gradescope, revisit the CS 240 ISA Exam listing as before, upload your PDF to the CS 240 ISA Exam assignment, and confirm that your answers appear legibly as expected in the Gradescope view. You can upload as many times as needed before the deadline. If you have issues, please contact the instructor ASAP.

Remember to mark your name, ID, and signature on the exam cover page before submitting your exam. Unsigned exams will not be graded.

Allowed Resources

The exam is subject to the Honor Code, with the following policies for allowed resources:

  • Human resources:
    • Exam work is strictly individual.
    • You may ask Ben clarifying questions about the exam via private messages.
    • You may not post messages in shared streams in Zulip.
    • You may not communicate about the exam with anyone except Ben.
    • You may not give or receive help on the exam, share the exam itself, or share solutions.
  • Reference resources:
    • The exam allows use of all materials included in the CS 240 website (any URL that starts with https://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs240/f21/), as well as electronic or physical textbooks and videos listed or linked on the topics page or lab page, and any assignment sample solutions shared by the instructors.
    • The exam allows use of your own CS 240 course notes and CS 240 course work.
    • No other resources are allowed. For example, you may not consult outside web resources such as a web search, StackOverflow, or materials for other courses.
  • Computational resources:
    • You may use a computer to access, print, scan, and submit the exam, and optionally to type/draw solutions.
    • All other computational resources are prohibited for exam work:
      • You may not run compilers, interpreters, or debuggers to assist with the exam.
      • You may not use a calculator or number converters to assist with the exam.

Topics

  • The exam focoses on topics under the Hardware-Software Interface part of the course.
    • While the exam does not focus on topics from the earlier Computational Building Blocks part of the course, the ideas are connected, so facility with those ideas may still help.
    • +Optional topics are excluded.
    • Later topics, starting with Memory Hierarchy, Cache, are excluded.
  • The exam assumes familiarity with the concepts used by assignments associated with the exam topics. The exam will not ask you to recall specific details of assignment solutions.

Study Materials

The following materials may be of use in studying for the exam:

  • Lecture slides, videos, and associated exercises
  • Lab exercises
  • Assignments
  • Review materials and Midterm/Final exams from a similar course at University of Washington in Autumn 2016 or later:
    • These sample exams follow a similar style to the CS 240 exam. Sample solutions are available.
    • It is sometimes necessary to pick and choose problems.
      • The topics relevant for CS 240 are split across the Midterm and Final exams in this other course.
      • These sample exams may also cover some topics, such as floating point numbers, caching, processes, or virtual memory, that will not be covered by this CS 240 exam, and some topics, such as integer representation and bitwise operations, that still matter, but will not be a primary focus of this CS 240 exam.
    • Avoid the exams prior to Autumn 2016, which use an older version of x86 that will confuse you.
    • An incomplete list of suggested problems:
      • Winter 2019:
        • Midterm: 2, 3, 4
        • Final: 1, 2, 3, 4
      • Autumn 2018:
        • Midterm: 2, 3, 4, 5
        • Final: M2, M3, M4, M5, F6
  • The chapters we have used in the CSAPP book include many excellent practice problems (with solutions at the end of the chapter) and homework problems.