Hardware / Microprocessor Interview Questions
10 Feb, 2007
- What is pipelining?
- What are the five stages in a DLX pipeline?
- For a pipeline with ‘n’ stages, what’s the ideal throughput? What prevents us from achieving this ideal throughput?
- What are the different hazards? How do you avoid them?
- Instead of just 5-8 pipe stages why not have, say, a pipeline with 50 pipe stages?
- What are Branch Prediction and Branch Target Buffers?
- How do you handle precise exceptions or interrupts?
- What is a cache?
- What’s the difference between Write-Through and Write-Back Caches? Explain advantages and disadvantages of each.
10 Feb, 2007
- Can structures be passed to the functions by value?
- Why cannot arrays be passed by values to functions?
- Advantages and disadvantages of using macro and inline functions?
- What happens when recursion functions are declared inline?
- Scope of static variables?
- Difference between object oriented and object based languages?
- Multiple inheritance - objects contain howmany multiply inherited ancestor?
- What are the 4 different types of inheritance relationship?
- How would you find out the no of instance of a class?
- Is java a pure object oriented language? Why?
10 Feb, 2007
- Explain why & how a MOSFET works
- Draw Vds-Ids curve for a MOSFET. Now, show how this curve changes (a) with increasing Vgs (b) with increasing transistor width (c) considering Channel Length Modulation
- Explain the various MOSFET Capacitances & their significance
- Draw a CMOS Inverter. Explain its transfer characteristics
- Explain sizing of the inverter
- How do you size NMOS and PMOS transistors to increase the threshold voltage?
- What is Noise Margin? Explain the procedure to determine Noise Margin
- Give the expression for CMOS switching power dissipation
- What is Body Effect?
10 Feb, 2007
- Give two ways of converting a two input NAND gate to an inverter
- Given a circuit, draw its exact timing response. (I was given a Pseudo Random Signal Generator; you can expect any sequential ckt)
- What are set up time & hold time constraints? What do they signify? Which one is critical for estimating maximum clock frequency of a circuit?
- Give a circuit to divide frequency of clock cycle by two
- Design a divide-by-3 sequential circuit with 50% duty circle. (Hint: Double the Clock)
10 Jan, 2007
- For a single computer processor computer system, what is the purpose of a processor cache and describe its operation?
- Explain the operation considering a two processor computer system with a cache for each processor.
- What are the main issues associated with multiprocessor caches and how might you solve it?
- Explain the difference between write through and write back cache.
- Are you familiar with the term MESI?
- Are you familiar with the term snooping?
- Describe a finite state machine that will detect three consecutive coin tosses (of one coin) that results in heads.
