Cambridge International AS & A Level

* 9 7 4 0 2 6 7 5 7 0 *

COMPUTER SCIENCE 9618/32

Paper 3 Advanced Theory October/November 2022

1 hour 30 minutes

You must answer on the question paper.

No additional materials are needed.

INSTRUCTIONS
● Answer all questions.
● Use a black or dark blue pen.
● Write your name, centre number and candidate number in the boxes at the top of the page.
● Write your answer to each question in the space provided.
● Do not use an erasable pen or correction fluid.
● Do not write on any bar codes.
● You may use an HB pencil for any diagrams, graphs or rough working.
● Calculators must not be used in this paper.

INFORMATION
● The total mark for this paper is 75.
● The number of marks for each question or part question is shown in brackets [ ].
● No marks will be awarded for using brand names of software packages or hardware.

This document has 12 pages. Any blank pages are indicated.

DC (RW/CGW) 302516/4
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1 Normalised floating-point numbers are stored in a computer system using two’s complement for
both the mantissa and the exponent with:

• 11 bits for the mantissa

• 5 bits for the exponent.

(a) Write the largest positive two’s complement binary number that can be stored in this system.

Mantissa Exponent

[1]

(b) Calculate the denary value of the given binary floating-point number.
Show your working.

Mantissa Exponent

1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1

Working .....................................................................................................................................

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Answer ......................................................................................................................................
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(c) State when underflow occurs in a binary floating-point system.

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2 Lexical analysis and syntax analysis are stages in the compilation of a program.

(a) Identify two other stages that take place during the compilation of a program.

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2 ................................................................................................................................................

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[2]

(b) Outline the purpose of syntax analysis.

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3 (a) Explain why a protocol is used in communication between computers.

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(b) The TCP/IP protocol implementation can be viewed as a stack.

Complete the diagram for the TCP/IP protocol stack.

Transport

Link
[2]

(c) Describe the purpose of the IMAP protocol.

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4 A program to manage regular flight details at an airport requires some user-defined data types.

(a) Write pseudocode statements to declare the enumerated data type Aircraft to hold data
about the types of aircraft used for a flight.

These types of aircraft are: C300, C350, D242, E757, X380.

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(b) Write pseudocode statements to declare the composite data type Flight to hold data about
flights to a specific destination. These include:

• flight number, which could be any combination of letters and numbers

• destination
• date of departure
• type of aircraft used.

Use the enumerated data type you created in part (a).

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(c) (i) Write the pseudocode statement to set up a variable for one record of the composite
data type Flight.

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(ii) Write pseudocode to store the details of the following flight in the variable you set up in
part (c)(i).

Field Data
flight number XA782
destination Cambridge
date of departure 12/12/2022
type of aircraft used C350

Use the field names you created in part (b).

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5 Describe what is meant by a virtual machine.

Include in your answer two benefits and two drawbacks of using a virtual machine.

Description .......................................................................................................................................

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Benefit 1 ...........................................................................................................................................

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Benefit 2 ...........................................................................................................................................

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Drawback 1 ......................................................................................................................................

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Drawback 2 ......................................................................................................................................

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6 (a) State two differences between symmetric and asymmetric encryption.

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(b) Explain the process by which an organisation may acquire its digital certificate.

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7 Supervised and unsupervised learning are two categories of machine learning.

Describe supervised learning and unsupervised learning.

Supervised learning .........................................................................................................................

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Unsupervised learning .....................................................................................................................

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8 (a) Draw a logic circuit for an SR flip-flop and label the inputs.

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Q̄

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[4]

(b) State the purpose of a flip-flop.

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(c) Simplify the following expression using Boolean algebra, including De Morgan’s laws.
Show your working.

(A.B).(A.C).(B.D)

Working .....................................................................................................................................

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9 (a) Explain the need for scheduling in process management.

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(b) Describe these scheduling routines and identify a benefit for each one.

Shortest job first ........................................................................................................................

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Round robin ..............................................................................................................................

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First come first served ..............................................................................................................

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10 (a) Define these Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) terms:

Encapsulation ...........................................................................................................................

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Getter ........................................................................................................................................

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Setter ........................................................................................................................................

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(b) A school has a program written using OOP to maintain its staff and student records.

The object SubstituteTeacher allows the details of the school’s substitute teachers to be
stored. This includes their full name, telephone number and whether or not they are in school
today. For example:

SubName Sarah Jones

Telephone 01223658721
InSchool TRUE

Complete the diagram for the object SubstituteTeacher, including appropriate properties
and their getters and setters.

SubstituteTeacher
SubName : STRING

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InSchool : BOOLEAN

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SetTelephone(Tel : STRING)

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GetSubName()

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[3]

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11 A simplified linked list is used to store the names of flowers in alphabetical order. It is implemented
using two 1D arrays:

• Flower stores the names of the flowers.

• NextPointer stores the pointer to the next flower name in the list.

HeadPointer indicates the index of the first flower name in the linked list.

HeadPointer 6

When the end of the linked list is reached, the next pointer has the value of 0.

The following table shows the initial content of the arrays.

Index Flower NextPointer

1 Rose 7
2 Marigold 1
3 Foxglove 10
4 Iris 9
5 Daisy 3
6 Dahlia 5
7 Saxifrage 0
8 Lupin 2
9 Lily 8
10 Hydrangea 4

(a) Several flower names have been deleted from the linked list. These are crossed out in the
following table.

Complete the table to show the new values of HeadPointer and NextPointer to keep the
remaining flower names in alphabetical order.

HeadPointer

Index Flower NextPointer

1 Rose
2 Marigold
3 Foxglove
4 Iris
5 Daisy
6 Dahlia
7 Saxifrage
8 Lupin
9 Lily
10 Hydrangea
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(b) Complete the pseudocode algorithm so that it achieves the following when applied to the
arrays:

• The flower name is input.

• The linked list is searched, in order, for the flower name.
• If the flower name is found, an appropriate message is output to indicate it has been
found.
• If the flower name is not found, an appropriate message is output to indicate it has not
been found.
• The algorithm terminates when the next pointer value is 0.

Pointer HeadPointer
Found 0
OUTPUT "Enter a flower name "

………………………………………………………………….

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IF Flower[Pointer] = FlowerName THEN
Found Pointer
Pointer 0
ELSE

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ENDIF
ENDWHILE

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OUTPUT Flower[Found], " is found"
ELSE

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ENDIF
[5]

(c) Explain how you could improve the simplified linked list structure.

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© UCLES 2022 9618/32/O/N/22