Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-year-1-of-the-computer-science-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2022/digital-systems-linear-algebra-introduction-to-formal-proof/3/a/solution

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Past exam of the year 1 of the computer science course of the University of Oxford / 2022 / Digital systems, linear algebra, introduction to formal proof / 3 / a / Solution by Codex 0 2026-10-25
Maintain the latest five temperature readings in a circular buffer, together with their running sum. The following C programming language code spells out the message passing interface rather than assuming a particular library: send(dst,&m) is a blocking synchronous message passing send; receive(src,&m) receives from the specified sender or ANY and returns the sender's identity; sendrec(dst,&m) atomically sends the request and waits for that sender's reply in the same message object. Successful, reliable operations are assumed. Message contents are copied by the interface.
enum { ANY = -1, TIMER = 1, TEMP = 2 };
enum { PULSE, PING, REQUEST, REPLY };
typedef struct {
    int type;
    int period_ms;
    double value;
} Message;

extern void send(int dst, const Message *m);
extern int receive(int src, Message *m);
extern void sendrec(int dst, Message *m);

void smooth(void) {
    double history[5] = {0};
    double sum = 0;
    int count = 0, next = 0;
    Message m = { .type = PULSE, .period_ms = 1000 };
    send(TIMER, &m);                 /* subscribe once */

    for (;;) {
        int sender = receive(count < 5 ? TIMER : ANY, &m);
        if (sender == TIMER && m.type == PING) {
            Message t = { .type = REQUEST };
            sendrec(TEMP, &t);       /* matching REPLY contains t.value */
            if (count == 5)
                sum -= history[next];
            else
                ++count;
            history[next] = t.value;
            sum += t.value;
            next = (next + 1) % 5;
        } else if (count == 5 && m.type == REQUEST) {
            Message answer = { .type = REPLY, .value = sum / 5.0 };
            send(sender, &answer);
        }
    }
}
Before the fifth reading, selective reception from TIMER prevents premature client requests from being accepted. Such clients wait at their synchronous sends; they are not given a partial arithmetic mean. Thereafter the operating-system process receives both timer messages and client requests. Each accepted PING initiates one measurement; each accepted client request returns the arithmetic mean of the five most recently completed measurements, without initiating another measurement or changing the circular buffer.
The loop invariant is that count is the number of valid readings, capped at five, sum is their sum, and next is the next unused slot during startup or the oldest slot afterwards. Removing the overwritten reading and adding the new one preserves this loop invariant. Each update and reply uses time complexity and storage, since the window length is fixed. Under timely sensor replies, timer delivery and process scheduling, measurements are initiated once per second. The next parts explain failures of these timing assumptions; the code does not promise one-second sampling when the sensor itself cannot sustain it.
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