9/27/2014

EE201L Quiz Preparation Guide

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Dear EE254L students,

The quiz carries 5% of your course grade. It is on 10/3/2014 Friday from 4:00PM
to 6:50PM in SGM124. It is an *open-book open-notes* exam.

EE 254L teaching team is holding extra office hours in the exam week. We will
post information about this asap separately.

I started conducting a quiz besides the two main exams (midterm and final or two
midterms) since Spring 2010 in EE254L (EE201L as it was called). The reason for
conducting a quiz with less weight is to warn the bottom one-fourth of the class
that a design exam is quite different from other exams. I am inspired by the
success of doing this in EE457. Every semester, in ee457, I come across a few
students, who are actually very bright students, but are not careful enough to
do the homework and practice exams properly.
Some of these students get an "F" grade in their quiz and then they wake up and
work hard and finally most of them get an "A" at the end! We may have some such
students in EE254L too!

More than anything else, it is important that you get a good sleep on Thursday
night to do well on the Friday morning exam. It is a design exam and you will
need to *think* and design during the exam. You should not be too tired to think
during the exam. So, please try to do most of your preparation before Thursday.
Come to the exam with a can do attitude.

Bring any lab handouts, Homework solutions, class notes, any handouts given in
class, etc. I will bring a few copies of Cadence (Esperan) Verilog guides to the
exam.
You can bring any book or written material (but not a computer to Google for the
answer!) to the open-book exam. Items should not be in loose sheets. If you have
loose handouts/sheets, put them in a 3-hole ring-binder and label the ring-
binder with your name.
Organize all the material neatly so that you can find information quickly.
You are NOT allowed to borrow any item even in the open-book part of the exam.
We do not allow borrowing items as it facilitates copying.

A. State Diagram design (includes waveform drawing and some RTL design)

Expect one or two major questions in this area.

You need to practice drawing waveforms.
You need to do 3 things: Practice, Practice, and Practice!

Reference material in this are

HW#7 State Diagram Design
http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/254/ee254l_homeworks/EE254L_HW7/ee254_HW7.pdf

Small system design handout

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/254/EE254L_CLASSNOTES/EE254_Ch7_System_Design/EE254L_System_design_handout.pdf
Example: Five Votes Voting machine, one-hot coded 8-bit data item, two-hot coded
8-bit data item
http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/254/ee254l_homeworks/EE254L_HW7/Voting_machine_State_Diagram.pdf

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/457/ee457_first_lecture/7_State_Diagram_Design_examples.avi (Watch the first
16 min 30 seconds only)
http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/254/ee254l_homeworks/EE254L_HW7/Voting_machine_State_Diagram.avi

More Voting machine state diagram design examples from exams in previous
semesters:
http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/254/ee254l_homeworks/EE254L_HW7/Voting_Machine_Some_more_examples.PDF

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/201/ee201l_homeworks/EE201L_HW7/Voting_Machine_Some_more_examples.PDF
http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/254/ee254l_homeworks/EE254L_HW7/Voting_Machine_Some_more_examples.wmv

State machine design and data path design review

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/254/ee254l_homeworks/EE254L_HW7/Quiz_review_Sp2011_small_sys_design_mht.pdf
http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/254/ee254l_homeworks/EE254L_HW7/Quiz_review_Sp2011_small_sys_design.avi

Question #4 from Spring 2010 quiz

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/254/EE201L_Sp2010_Exams/ee201_Quiz_Sp2010.pdf
http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/254/EE201L_Sp2010_Exams/ee201_Quiz_Sp2010_Pages_9_10_DataPath_Inches_Feet_Yard
s_lec_mht.pdf

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/254/EE201L_Sp2010_Exams/ee201_Quiz_Sp2010_Pages_9_10_DataPath_Inches_Feet_Yard
s.avi

B. One-Hot state assignment method of implementing a state machine

One question.
B.1 Homework #5
http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/254/ee254l_homeworks/EE254L_HW5/EE254L_HW5.pdf

B.2 Labs: Detour Lab, Number lock lab (schematic)

C. Datapath Design:
One question.

C.1 Data registers and how to exercise write control on them.

(registers with data enable (select line on the recirculating mux))
http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/457/ee457_first_lecture/ee457x4_Data_Registers.pdf
http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/457/ee457_first_lecture/4_Data_Registers_with_Data_Enable.avi
C.2 Material covered on divider datapath,
Quiz_review_Sp2011_small_sys_design_mht.pdf, inches-feet-yards datapath,

D. Verilog Coding (You can use the Cadence (Esperan) Guide)

Reference material: My lecture slides and videos posted on the BB under
Assignments => EE254L Lab Manual Fall 2014 ==> EE254L -- Verilog Introductory
Lectures and Lecture slides
Examples of Exam questions:
http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-
s/254/EE201L_Fall2013_Exams/Verilog_Exam_Questions.pdf

A 2-part lecture (Review_of_Exam_Questions_on_Verilog_part1.avi and

Review_of_Exam_Questions_on_Verilog_part2.avi) was added to the list of lectures
on Verilog:
http://ee-classes.usc.edu/ee254/Verilog/

Also go through the Verilog code for the special counter with jump and bonus
demonstrating the use of blocking and non blocking assignments discussed in
class. The zip file (ee254L_sync_counter_mix_of_blocking_and_non_blocking.zip)
containing the code and 2 test benches is provided at the above link. You can
download it into C:\Modelsim_projects directory and simulate it.
There will be one design similar to this for you to complete in the exam.

Expect to see on your exam one question containing several small questions
covering these topics:
synchronous and asynchronous reset flip-flop coding
Combinational logic coding
Middle finder, Parity generator, mux, Decoder, etc.
Later assignments over-ride earlier assignments in procedural blocks (begin-end
blocks).
Default assignments at the beginning of a block can be selectively over-ridden
by later assignments.
"case" statement, "if" statement, "for" statement

E. General lab questions including Nexys 3 board, Xilinx and ModelSim tools,
etc.
One or two questions. Please bring your lab manual to the exam.
We assume that you all understand the scanning control of the 7-segment LEDs,
de-bouncing and single-stepping, multi-stepping, output-coded state assignment
method to design a control unit (to avoid OFL there by any glitches in the
control signals generated from the control unit).

F. Practice questions from previous exams:

Do not look at the solutions to the past quiz/midterm questions until you
arrived at your answers mentally.
The solutions to the exams are posted on the BB under announcements.
I have given you a lot of sample questions to refer to and practice.
However do not panic if you do not have time to go through all the suggested
review questions. It is enough if you go through the *later* half of these.
Better to go through more recent exams than very old exams.

(i) Midterm #1 Spring 2004 Q#3 and Q#4

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/ee102_midterm1_Sp2004.pdf

(ii) Midterm #2 Spring 2004

Q#1.1, Q#1.2, Q#1.3, Q#1.4, (skip Q #1.5 Q #1.6 and Q #1.7) Q#3

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/ee102_midterm2_Sp04.pdf

(iii) Midterm #1 Spring 2005 Q#4 and Q#5

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/ee102_midterm1_Sp2005.pdf

(iv) Midterm #2 Spring 2005 Q#2 (if you have time), Q#5, Q#8

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/ee102_midterm2_Sp2005.pdf

(v) Midterm #1 Spring 2006 Q#3 (this is a difficult question, so skip if you do not have time), Q#5,
Q#6.

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/ee201_midterm1_Sp2006.pdf

(vi) Midterm #2 Spring 2006 Q#1

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/ee201_midterm2_Sp2006.pdf

(vii) Midterm #1 Spring 2008 Q#1.1, Q#1.2, Q#1.3, Q#1.4, Q#2, Q#3(skip Q#3.5, Q#3.6), Q#5

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/EE201L_Sp2008_Exams/ee201_midterm1_Sp2008.pdf

(viii) Midterm #2 Spring 2008 Q#4

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/EE201L_Sp2008_Exams/ee201_midterm2_Sp2008.pdf

(ix) Midterm #1 Spring 2009 Q#1 (skip 1.6)

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/EE201L_Sp2009_Exams/ee201_midterm1_Sp2009.pdf

(x) Midterm #2 Spring 2009 None

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/EE201L_Sp2009_Exams/ee201_midterm2_Sp2009.pdf

(xi) Quiz Spring 2010 all questions

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/EE201L_Sp2010_Exams/ee201_Quiz_Sp2010.pdf

(x) Quiz Spring 2011 all questions except 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/EE201L_Sp2011_Exams/ee201_Quiz_Sp2011.pdf

(xi) Quiz Spring 2012 all questions

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/EE201L_Sp2012_Exams/ee201_Quiz_Sp2012.pdf

(x) Quiz Spring 2013 all questions

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/EE201L_Sp2013_Exams/ee201_Quiz_Sp2013.pdf

(x) Quiz Fall 2013 all questions

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/EE201L_Fall2013_Exams/ee201_Quiz_Fall2013.pdf

(x) Quiz Spring 2014 all questions

http://www-classes.usc.edu/engr/ee-s/254/EE201L_Sp2014_Exams/ee201_Quiz_Sp2014.pdf