Examination guide

To help you prepare for the oral exam we have made an examination guide that lists the five main categories that will be covered during the exam:

A. General technology, programmable logic and FPGAs
B. VHDL
C. Embedded systems
D. Real-time operating systems
E. Tools, project and design flow

Link to examination guide document

For each main category a set of questions/topics are listed, and these will provide the basis for our discussion. We will not have time to cover every question, but all questions are subject to the discussion.  We may also ask questions that are not listed in the examination guide, but this will only be done if we think this may help to improve your result.

We would like to give you the opportunity to get a good start on the oral exam. You are therefore free to choose 2-3 questions/topics within one of the 4 categories A, B, C or D that you can start to present / answer. Depending on how you present this material we can give you up to 10 minutes for this part.

In general we expect you to start talking about a topic/question in a way that demonstrates your knowledge and understanding of this topic/question. If we are happy about the way you present the material we will let you continue to talk as we guide you through the topics we would like to discuss. This will give you an opportunity to have some influence on the content of the discussion.

To help the discussion we may bring up visual aids such as figures, text or code that we may ask you to discuss or explain. This will be figures or code that are related to the questions in the examination guide, and that have been covered in the course material and therefore already should be familiar to you.

We may ask you to draw or write during the exam and you should therefore prepare for this eventuality. If you have a tablet or PC with a touch screen or digital pen option, you can for example log in to the same Zoom meeting and share your screen.  Alternatively you can also use your phone as a document camera, logging in to the same Zoom meeting, turning on the camera and mounting the found in a way that allows you to show a piece of paper that you are writing on. In the case we may ask you to write a short piece of code, it may be an advantage to use an editor on your PC that has syntax highlighting for c or VHDL. You can then either share you screen or editor window.  But if you prefer, you can also use handwriting for this purpose. We recommend you to try these this solutions already now to be well prepared on the exam day.

More information on digital oral exams at UiO can be found here:

https://www.mn.uio.no/english/about/hse/corona/1-2-3-guide-digital-oral-exam-english/

The language of the exam will either be Norwegian or English depending on your choice. We know that the topics covered in this course make use of many words and expressions for which we may not have good or obvious alternatives in Norwegian. We will therefore of course accept that you use the English words and expressions even if you prefer language for the exam is Norwegian.

We tentatively plan to spend between 30-45 minutes per candidate. A preliminary table will be prepared early next week. The examination period will Monday December 14th to Wednesday December 16th, and between 08:30 and 18:00. The time slots will be distributed randomly unless you have already opted for a preferred time slot due to special circumstances. Preferred time slots can NOT be guaranteed, but special circumstances such as other colliding exams and limited access to a quiet and undisturbed place to sit the exam will be prioritised.