Bookby Dr. Anirban Chakraborty

The Hardware Interview

The same architecture, organized the way an interview is organized.

36 chapters·6 parts·≈ 42.7 h read

Thirty-six topics covering what CPU and SoC design interviews actually ask about, from setup and hold through out-of-order execution, power and timing closure, accelerators, chiplets and CXL. Written to be answered out loud rather than skimmed.

Where the architecture course develops an idea because the next idea depends on it, this develops it because someone is going to ask about it at a whiteboard. The two overlap deliberately and cross-reference each other, so a topic that feels thin in one place can be followed to its fuller treatment in the other. Nothing here is specific to one employer.

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Table of Contents

6 parts · 36 chapters
  1. 01Digital Logic, Timing, and Sequential Fundamentalsadvanced·28 min read
  2. 02State Machines, Arbiters, FIFOs, Flow Control, and CAMsadvanced·23 min read
  3. 03Clock Generation, Distribution, Reset, and Domain Crossingadvanced·42 min read
  4. 04RTL Design and SystemVerilog Practiceadvanced·97 min read
  5. 05Arithmetic Hardware, Adders, Multipliers, Dividers, Shiftersadvanced·18 min read
  6. 06RISC-V, the ISA, the Privileged Spec, and the Vector Extensionadvanced·136 min read