# Computer Engineering Prep



## NY-Computer-Engineer (May 26, 2018)

Hi all,

It was suggested that I describe my experience in selecting, preparing for, and ultimately passing the "Electrical: Computer Engineering" PE examination.

To start, I had not originally planned to take the Computer Engineering exam.  Although my undergraduate degree, along with my first 10 years of experience were in the computer engineering field (working as a junior computer engineer while I completed the last two years of my Bachelor's degree), I switched over to Software Engineering around the same time I started my Master's in Computer Science and worked in the field for the next 18 years.

One of the first things I did was order the Software Engineering practice exam (which is not provided by NCEES but by IEEE).  After getting it and trying to complete the 50 questions, I became quite frustrated and wondered if trying for a PE was really in the cards for me.  That test seemed to have nothing to do with what I had been doing for previous 18 years, and it seemed I was going to have a terrible experience trying to learn all the obscure terminology, and memorize the named of hundred of PHD's who had written books and created white papers on the various SE topics.  For example, I had no idea that there were four different experts in the sub-field of software change management, each of which I would have had to learn about and memorize their works.  Also, that pseudo computer language I would have had to learn was ridiculous.  I was very disappointed and was thinking about giving up the whole idea - even though I had spent the previous two years getting myself back up to speed on engineering basics (and math) again in order to pass the FE in Electrical &amp; Computers.

Then, I got the idea to look into other PE disciplines to determine if success with another discipline was more of a reality for me.  Which led to me ordering the practice Exam for the Computer Engineering test from NCEES.

It was a miracle.  When I took that practice examination 'cold' I got a score of 60    There were several areas I realized that I needed to bone-up on,  which included:  Hamming Codes, Floating Point Binary Number formats (single and double precision), some of the more obscure communications protocols, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA's - which were not around when I earned my CE Bachelor's Degree), Boolean Logic and Karnaugh Maps, Real-Time &amp; Embedded Systems, and the internal transistor circuits that made up common logic gates and flip-flops.  All formable subjects but clearly doable, since I had some dated experience on all of those subjects except FPGA's, or the Verilog / VHDL hardware descriptor languages used to program them.

I then laid out a detailed study plan covering all those topics, plus refresh my knowledge on other common CE theory (such as computer architecture models, and cache memory - as used in some of the newer RISC microprocessors such ARM).  Unfortunately, my plan could not include attending a review course, since there are so few of us taking this particular PE exam, therefore no training is available - Unless I decided to go back and take some undergraduate courses for a couple of years (although I found a way to do something similar as described below).  PPI does have a Reference Manual for Computer Engineering (which I of course purchased) and utilized as the initial outline for my study plan.

Things execution of my study plan started out very well, until I realized I needed many more reference and text books - a lot of them.  The PPI manual just did not go into the depth I needed (which was one of the gripes in the Amazon reviews about that manual that I ignored when I purchased it).  The undergraduate texts that I still had stored away, were about 25 years old, and others that I may have been able to use, had long ago been given away to co-workers who were still in school.  I did some research, and followed the suggestion of someone in a YouTube who said the text books used in creating many of the PE questions were about five years old.  So I got my credit card out, went on Amazon, and started looking for good candidate text books.

I wound up purchasing:


the 4th Edition of the "Electronic Engineers' Handbook" (the most expensive and least useful book during the exam);

the 2nd Edition of "Digital Design and Computer Architecture" (moderately priced - $60 - and the most useful book - both during Study and at the exam);

the ARM edition of "Computer Organization and Design" (about the same moderate price as #2, but useful only for Floating Point and Hamming Code study and reference);

the 3rd Edition of "Essentials of 'Software Engineering'" (which was low cost but also the least used);

the 5th Edition of "Computer Networks - A systems approach" (quite useful during my study, however the Index is poor, so I found it difficult to use during the test - I now realize I should have read that book through cover-to-cover), and finally; and,

the 4th Edition "Real-Time Systems Design and Analysis" ( another book that was expensive, and one I should have read cover-to-cover since the Index was somewhat limited).  A lesson learned here was that I should have purchased many of these books much earlier in my study program.

I also found some excellent material on YouTube.  In particular, the lectures by Professor Bruce Land of Cornell University, who recorded all of his Computer Engineering lectures for over two years of his classes.  That is where I learned about FPGA's and some of the new concepts in Computer Engineering that were not part of the program I took while earning my Bachelor's in CE so many moons ago.  I believe I watched more than 50 of his lectures, and some of them two or three times (at approximately 50 mins each, you can imagine how much time I invested there).  He also inspired me to buy a Terasic FPGA development board - 'DE1-Standard' (which cost about $200 on Ebay and the software is free from Altera), providing me the opportunity of creating FPGA hardware logic using Verilog.

Finally, and I believe most importantly, I created my own 'Reference Manual' (sort of a Cheat Book. or a set of Cheat Sheets), which I had spiral-bound at Staples with vinyl covers.  I included many tables and some Wiki information to help me quickly get to some important material during the exam as quickly as I possible.  It came out to be over 60 pages, and I believe it helped me correctly answer at least a dozen questions (combined morning and afternoon portions of the test).  It included all of those areas I mentioned earlier as topics I needed to study (based on the CE practice exam0.  For example, I had the layouts of 7-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit 'hamming codes' in tabular form (some of which was contained in reference text book #3, but other details from online articles).

Anyway, this write-up has probably gone on too long already.  I just wanted to describe what worked for me in dealing with one of the 'Lesser' taken PE exams, which someone out there may find useful.  I will gladly expand on anything I've mentioned, except for giving away any specific questions I actually encountered during my exam.

BTW, If anyone is interested in the 'Test Taking' methodology I use, just leave me a response to this thread and I will add.


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## ChebyshevII PE PMP (Dec 8, 2018)

Thank you for posting this; I just passed the Computer Engineering exam as well, and my experience with the CERM was almost exactly the same. I went through it for about a month and then started looking around for tips about the exam; I stumbled upon other blog posts that made me reconsider my reference choices.

I also used the 2nd edition of Digital Design and Computer Architecture, which was absolutely invaluable for the exam I took.

I will say though, although the CERM is incomplete, it did still prove useful, especially for electronics/transistor concepts. As I've been working mostly with industrial control systems since I graduated college, I don't get a lot of exposure to the low-level electronics concepts anymore. The reference manual gave me a great review on these subjects.

Wish I would have found your post first! It certainly would have proven useful for me. Cheers!


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## NY-Computer-Engineer (Dec 10, 2018)

ChebyshevII said:


> Thank you for posting this; I just passed the Computer Engineering exam as well, and my experience with the CERM was almost exactly the same. I went through it for about a month and then started looking around for tips about the exam; I stumbled upon other blog posts that made me reconsider my reference choices.
> 
> I also used the 2nd edition of Digital Design and Computer Architecture, which was absolutely invaluable for the exam I took.
> 
> ...


Congratulations ChebyshevII 

Welcome to the club - the club of PE's part of the least certified group of EE's.

One thing that did result is my renewed interest in the hardware and firmware design fields.  I bought a* Terasic DE-10* design board as part of my preparation for the exam, and I just finished building an experimenters box with it's multiple power supplies/adapters and multiple bread boarding options on a large Plexiglas top cover.  Now I am almost done assembling a new high performance desktop PC (Intel i7 8700 6-core chip, 16gig Memory, SSD and M.2 drives) where I will be installing multiple operating systems and doing some Verilog/VHDL designs.  I just need an increased budget to take that all where I would like to get it.


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## KY Michigan (Sep 29, 2019)

Hi,

Thank you for the detailed explanation. This is one of the very few posts about PE Computer Engineering, and is very informative. I am planning to take the PE exam next month and have been preparing for the exam. If it is okay, would it be possible to share the notes you used during the exam.

Also, any recommendations on test taking strategies?


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## Sam1234 (Dec 25, 2019)

NY-Computer-Engineer said:


> Hi all,
> 
> It was suggested that I describe my experience in selecting, preparing for, and ultimately passing the "Electrical: Computer Engineering" PE examination.
> 
> ...






tmntjmc said:


> I failed.. 2nd time taking it raw score correct was 45.. I'm really bummed..


Hi Can you please share your own reference manual with us? Thanks.


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## Sam1234 (Dec 25, 2019)

Hi ChebyshevII:

Your success is impressive. Can you please share your own Reference Manual (the one you prepared) with us? Thanks.


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## ChebyshevII PE PMP (Dec 25, 2019)

Sam1234 said:


> Hi ChebyshevII:
> 
> Your success is impressive. Can you please share your own Reference Manual (the one you prepared) with us? Thanks.


Hello @Sam1234 (and @KY Michigan),

My reference manual really wasn’t much more than the following:

1) solved problems (my own work) from the practice tests and references I used

2) various articles I found online, covering very general and basic information about certain computer engineering concepts (Gray code, encryption techniques, etc.) that my references didn’t really cover

For me, the binder I made was my least used reference. I relied more heavily on the textbook references I brought with me. I can provide a more complete list of what I brought with me if you feel it would be helpful.


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## Sam1234 (Dec 25, 2019)

That will be helpful  please. Thank you.


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## ChebyshevII PE PMP (Dec 25, 2019)

Sam1234 said:


> That will be helpful  please. Thank you.


In order of most useful to least useful:

Digital Design and Computer Architecture (2nd ed.) - David Money Harris &amp; Sarah L. Harris

Data and Computer Communications (8th ed.) - William Stallings

Modern Operating Systems (4th ed.) - Andrew S. Tanenbaum &amp; Herbert Bos

Computer Engineering Reference Manual for the Electrical and Computer PE Exam (1st ed.) - John A. Camara

Software Engineering (9th ed.) - Ian Sommerville (mostly for software definitions)

Computer Organization And Design - The Hardware/Software Interface (3rd ed.) - David A. Patterson &amp; John L. Hennessy

PE Electrical and Computer - Computer Engineering Practice Exam (Nov. 2017) - NCEES

Computer Engineering Practice Problems for the Electrical and Computer PE Exam - John A. Camara

Electric Circuits (9th ed.) - James W. Nilsson &amp; Susan A. Riedel

Computer Engineering Sample Exam for the Electrical and Computer PE Exam - John A. Camara

Introduction to Wireless Systems - Bruce A. Black et. al.

Engineering Unit Conversions (4th ed.) - Michael R. Lindeburg

Ugly's Electrical References (2011 ed.) - George V. Hart and Sammie Hart

in addition, here is a blog post I wrote, which elaborates more on the above resources:

http://esotericengineer.blogspot.com/2018/12/path-to-licensure-part-2b.html?m=1


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## Sam1234 (Dec 26, 2019)

Thank you very much all this information helps tremendously.


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## babybus (Dec 15, 2020)

ChebyshevII PE said:


> Digital Design and Computer Architecture (2nd ed.) - David Money Harris &amp; Sarah L. Harris
> 
> Data and Computer Communications (8th ed.) - William Stallings
> 
> ...


I rent these books from Amazon and brought them to the exams. Only these 4 books along with my personal note and I PASSEDDDDD without spending too much time on studying and researching for reference documents. Thanks for sharing these, it's life saver, dude! Also, exam on 10/2020 was the last one in paper format. Hopefully we will have more posts for computer engineering in CBT format.


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