Interview Questions
Interview Question - Design & Optimization
This question involves doing some of the design work for a circuit that implements Instruction P and Instruction Q usin…
Interview Questions
Interview Question - Performance Analysis
A farmer is trying to decide which of his two trucks to use to transport his apples along the narrow and winding dirt r…
Interview Questions
Some good Puzzles / Interview questions
Great Puzzles / VLSI Design Interview questions Everything that is tagged "Interview Questions" - Link Aptitu…
Technology
FerroElectric RAM
If you've fantasized about how wonderful your life could be if the merits of DRAM, SRAM and Flash memory could all …
News
Nokia Q3 profit - 2.2$B
While everyone else was distracted by some touchscreen thing, Nokia spent the past quarter absolutely dominating the wo…
Career
Recipes for an extraordinary career
Skepticism OK – Cynicism NOT! Skepticism is a method But Cynicism is a position!
Career
Recipes for an extraordinary career
Don't hide behind the process! All good companies have well thought-out processes But Don't let it get in the w…
E-Books
E-Books
Hello and Welcome!! If you are looking for free E-Books you are in the wrong place !!!!!!! We only feature some good E-…
Power Gating
Hierarchy and Power Gating
A scalable approach to chip architecture is essential and valuable since a SOC design today often becomes a component i…
Low Power
Architecture and partitioning for low power
A good working definition of architecture ( in the context of IP design, atleast) is the partitioning and interface des…
Retention
Retention mechanisms in power gated designs
How can we retain state of some of the registers in the design? How to deal with memory state? Let me try to explain…
Timing
Timing closure impacted by DVFS!!
While designing systems with DVFS techniques, we need to look at the impact of temperature inversion on the performance…
Board Design
Tip of the day - Board Design
Have you ever asked yourself the question: What should I do with the areas under the ICs? My advise is: If you have a m…
Career
Recipes for an Extraordinary Career
Integrity is the foundation Massaging the truth can get you out of an immediate crisis But Hidden agendas never remain …
Career
Recipes for an Extraordinary Career
Show that passion! Technical competence is a must But It's the "passion" that makes the difference! Watch…
Low Power
Voltage and Frequency scaling mechanisms
There are various voltage scaling approaches that are in use today, Static Voltage Scaling: Different blocks in t…
Interview Questions
Mental Ability Question
If performance doubles every two years, by what percentage does performance go up every month? :-)
Interview Questions
Interview Question - Gray Codes
What are the tradeoffs in implementing a program counter for a microprocessor using Gray coding? Sol: Gray coding is…
General
Shyness due to Gadgets?
Though we certainly feel as if we've had this discussion before, gadgets are being blamed for an increase in shynes…
Interview Questions
Interview Question - Testing
As time goes by, the average number of transistors on a chip is increasing faster than the number of input/output pins.…
Interview Questions
Interview Question
If we increase the supply voltage for a circuit, answer whether the short-circuiting current is most likely to increase…
Programming
Interview Question
Some software programming languages allow compilers to perform "short cut" or "short circuit" optim…
Timing
Interview Question
Due to a miscommunication during design, you thought your circuit was supposed to have a supply voltage of 2.1 volts (t…
Interview Questions
Interview Question
Your group designs a microprocessor for use in cell phones and palmtop computers. You currently fabricate your chips on…
Interview Questions
Interview Question
The average performance of products in your market segment triples every 36 months. Your design engineers have proposed…
Interview Questions
Interview Question
When trying to validate the behavior of a circuit under boundary conditions, would you use coverage monitors or asserti…
Interview Questions
Interview Question
When writing a specification for a circuit, the specification should be "obviously correct". What does this m…
Interview Questions
Interview Question
What are the main differences between reference model testbenches and relational style testbenches? For what types of c…
Interview Questions
Interview Question
For a system with 64 primary inputs, 1024 internal states, 6,120 combinational signals, and 14 primary outputs, how man…
Interview Questions
Interview Question
Your task is to predict the maximum performance that you can achieve if you implement the following pseudocode in hardw…
Interview Questions
Interview Question
The well-dressed marketing group just learned that a circuit you designed has undetectable faults. They are debating th…
Interview Questions
Interview Question - Low power
You are on a team that is exploring power reduction techniques for a new design. The details of the design and implemen…
DataFlow
Dataflow Diagrams
Dataflow diagrams are data-dependency graphs where the computation is divided into clock cycles. Purpose: Provide a dis…
Models
Algorithms and High level models
For designs with significant control flow, algorithms can be described in software languages, flowcharts, abstract stat…
Interview Questions
Interview question - Fabrication, Hypothesis, Power, Process
While you are eating lunch at your regular table in the company cafeteria, a vice president sits down and starts to tal…
Interview Questions
Interview question - Clock and Voltage
Increasing clock speed without increasing power... The following are given: You need to increase the clock speed of a…
Interview Questions
Interview question - Power & Area
One day you are strolling the hallways in search of inspiration, when you bump into a person from the marketing departm…
Interview Questions
Interview question
If you were to compare a typical digital circuit from 5 years ago with a typical digital circuit today, would you find …
Interview Questions
Basic Timing - Interview question
Assume that the timing diagram shows the limits of the allowed times (either minimum or maximum). For each of the terms…
Interview Questions
Interview Questions
If you have to write your own code (i.e. you do not have a library of memory components or a special component generati…
VHDL
Comparison of VHDL to Other Hardware Description Languages
VHDL Disadvantages VHDL is verbose, complicated and confusing Many different ways of saying the same thing Constructs t…
Power
Power Analysis and Power-Aware Design - Part 1
Importance of Power and Energy: Laptops, PDA, cell-phones, etc —obvious! For microprocessors in personal computers, eve…
Learning
Delay Modelling and Coding Guidelines
In digital logic design, there are different types of delay modeling. Some of the commonly used delay modeling techniqu…
Wishes
New Year's Wishes
May you get a clean bill of health from your dentist, your cardiologist, your gastro-enterologist, your urologist, your…
Editorial
Future Trends!!
How long do you think DVDs have around? 20 years? 10 years? Actually, they have only been around for about seven years,…
GLS
Gate Level Simulation, Part - II
Gate level simulation is used in the late design phase to increase the level of confidence about a design implementat…
Verilog
Verilog rules that can save your breath !
This article contains some thoughts of mine about how and engineer should write Verilog code for Synthesis, general rul…