1.

General Digital Design Questions

1) Explain why & how a MOSFET works

Ans: Inversion layer formed in the substrate connecting the source and drain when the gate
voltage exceeds the threshold. Thus the device conducts and the conduction is controlled by the
gate.

2) 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

Ans: a) Ids is Quadratically proportional

proportional to Vgs for a long channel MOSFET and linearly
proportional to Vgs for a short channel MOSFET. Graph below shows Ids vs Vds for different
Vgs for both short channel and long channel.

Vgs=1.2

Vgs=1.2
Vgs=0.8
Vgs=0.8

Long channel Short Channel

b) With Increasing transistor width Ids increases. Ids W/L

c) Even after the transistor reaches saturation region, Ids will slightly increase when Vds is
changed. This is channel length modulation.

3) Explain the various MOSFET Capacitances & their significance

Ans: The MOSFET capacitance varies depending

depending upon the region
region of operation of the transistor
transistor

4) Draw a CMOS Inverter. Explain its transfer characteristics

5) Explain sizing of the inverter

6) How do you size NMOS and PMOS transistors to increase the threshold voltage?

Short channel => vt decreases, long channel => vt increases.

Narrow width effect  increases Vt.

7) What is Noise Margin? Explain the procedure to determine Noise Margin

NMlow = VOL - VIL

NMhigh = VIH - VOH

Transfer characteristic of an inverter can be used to determine the noise margin

The p-device is in linear region and the n-device is in saturation. VIL is found by determining the
unity gain point in the transfer characteristic where the output transitions from VOH. S imilarly,
VIH is found by using the unity gain point at the VOL end of the characteristic.

8) Give the expression for CMOS switching power dissipation

αCLVDDVswingf 

9) What is Body Effect?

When the substrate of a NMOS or PMOS is not connected to the source, there exists a bias
voltage Vsb across the source and substrate.

10) Describe the various effects of scaling

Two types of scaling:

1) Constant Field Scaling => Voltages reduced to keep  E = V/L constant
2) Constant Voltage Scaling => Fields increase since L decreasing
Look into this website for more details about scaling. He has given 3 pages of lecture. _ 
 _ 

http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~ehoffman/ece555/l
http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~ehoffman/ece555/lectures/lecture2/lectur
ectures/lecture2/lecture2.pdf 
e2.pdf 

11) Give the expression for calculating Delay in CMOS circuit

12) What happens to delay if you increase load capacitance?

Delay increases given the VDD is the same…since it takes more time to charge and discharge the
capacitor.

13) What happens to delay if we include a resistance at the output of a CMOS circuit?

Delay increases T=RC.

14) What are the limitations in increasing the power supply to reduce delay?

More power consumption

15) How does Resistance of the metal lines vary with increasing thickness and increasing length?

16) You have three adjacent parallel metal lines. Two out of phase signals pass through the outer
two metal lines. Draw the waveforms in the center metal line due to interference. Now, draw the
signals if the signals in outer metal lines are in phase with each other

17) What happens if we increase the number of contacts or via from one metal layer to the next?

More current, Resistance is reduced…improves electromigration

18) Draw a transistor level two input NAND gate. Explain its sizing (a) considering
VTH(switching threshold)
threshold) (b) for equal rise and fall times
19) Let A & B be two inputs of the NAND gate. Say signal A arrives at the NAND gate later than
signal B. To optimize delay, of the two series NMOS inputs A & B, which one would you place
near the output?

20) Draw the stick diagram of a NOR gate. Optimize it.

21) For CMOS logic, give the various techniques you know to minimize power consumption

22) What is Charge Sharing? Explain the Charge Sharing problem while sampling data from a
Bus

23) Why do we gradually increase the size of inverters in buffer design? Why not give the output
of a circuit to one large inverter?

24) In the design of a large inverter, why do we prefer to connect small transistors in
parallel (thus increasing effective width) rather than lay out one transistor with large
width?

This is called legging or folding of devices…this gives a better aspect ratio for the layout
and also by sharing the source and drains we could reduce the parasitic cap and improve
the drive strength.

25) Given a layout, draw its transistor level circuit. (I was given a 3 input AND gate and a 2 input
Multiplexer. You can expect any simple 2 or 3 input gates)

26) Give the logic expression for an AOI gate. Draw its transistor level equivalent . Draw its stick 
diagram

sum of products and then inverter at the end

27) Why don't we use just one NMOS or PMOS transistor as a transmission gate?

 Nmos doesn’t pass 1 well and pmos doesn’t pass 0 well..so Vt dro p….constant DC current and
DC power consumption…

28) For an NMOS transistor acting as a pass transistor, say the gate is connected to VDD, give the
output for a square pulse input going from 0 to VDD

29) Draw a 6-T SRAM Cell and explain the Read and Write operations

30) Draw the Differential Sense Amplifier and explain its working. Any idea how to size this
circuit? (Consider Channel Length Modulation)

It is used in memories for reading ..-> senses the change in voltage in the bit and bit_bar lines.

31) What happens if we use an Inverter instead of the Differential Sense Amplifier?

For inverter-> the voltage has to go below threshold to detect a change in level. So it is very slow.
Differential sense amplifier detects even a slight change so more fast in reading
32) Draw the SRAM Write Circuitry

33) Approximately, what were the sizes of your transistors in the SRAM cell? How did you
arrive at those sizes?

34) How does the size of PMOS Pull Up transistors (for bit & bit- lines) affect SRAM's
performance?

35) What's the critical path in a SRAM?

Memory cell

36) Draw the timing diagram for a SRAM Read. What happens if we delay the enabling of 
Clock signal?

37) Give a big picture of the entire SRAM Layout showing your placements of SRAM Cells,
Row Decoders, Column Decoders, Read Circuit, Write Circuit and Buffers

38) In a SRAM layout, which metal layers would you prefer for Word Lines and Bit Lines?
Why?

I think the word line has to be in a higher metal layer because the signal has to propagate to
all the bits of the word to read or write from/to the particular word…higher metal layers
could be wider and carry more current.

39) How can you model a SRAM at RTL Level?

6-transistor cell

40) What’s the difference between Testing & Verification?

Answer is in this website: http://www.vlsibank.com/ under EDA tools..I have copied then
for you : 3 answers
 Answer1:verification proves conformance with a specification.
testing tries to find cases where the system does not meet its specification.
the different kinds of verification are timing and f unctional verification,
while timing verification is to verify or determine the longest delay path in a circuit to optimize
performance and to make sure that the clock cycles are correct.
Functional verification is to compare symbolic descriptions of circuit functionality with the
derived behavior of the individual parts of the circuit, also described symbolically. In each case a
specification is given (time delays or behavior) and the checker ensures that the rules are met.

Answer2: I think testing is post-fabrication and is used to detect bad chips.

While verification is pre-fabrication and is used to make sure the design is correct and meets the
specs.

Answer3: verification is verifying functionality of design whether it is working as intended.This

should done before syntheizing phase.
Testing is technology dependent this should done after generating netlist. here going verify each
gates in the design,it is working properly r not.

41) For an AND-OR implementation of a two input Mux, how do you test for Stuck-At-0
and Stuck-At-1 faults at the internal nodes? (You can expect a circuit with some redundant
logic)

42) What is Latch Up? Explain Latch Up with cross section of a CMOS Inverter. How do you
avoid Latch Up? ……..done

ans) more sub contacts, STI, epilayer

 Digital Design:

1) Give two ways of converting a two input NAND gate to an inverter …….done

ans) short the 2 inputs or connect one input to VDD.

2) Given a circuit, draw its exact timing response. (I was given a Pseudo Random Signal
Generator; you can expect any sequential ckt)

3) What are set up time & hold time constraints? What do they signify? Which one is critical for
estimating maximum clock frequency of a circuit? ……done

4) Give a circuit to divide frequency of clock cycle by two …D flip flop…connect the Q_bar to D
input..

5) Design a divide-by-3 sequential circuit with 50% duty circle. (Hint: Double the Clock) ….done

6) Suppose you have a combinational circuit between two registers driven by a clock. What will
you do if the delay of the combinational circuit is greater than your clock signal? (You can't
resize the combinational circuit transistors) …done

either delay the clock to the second clock by intentionally adding skew or increase the clock 
period…look at the answer below.

7) The answer to the above question is breaking the combinational circuit and pipelining it. What
will be affected if you do this? …done

Throughput is increased, delay is also increased.

8) What are the different Adder circuits you studied?

RCA, CLA, carry select adder…carry save adder…

9) Give the truth table for a Half Adder. Give a gate level implementation of the same. …done

10) Draw a Transmission Gate-based D-Latch …..done

Two T-gates in series. D is the input of the first T-gate and Q is the o/p of the second T-gate

11) Design a Transmission Gate based XOR. Now, how do you convert it to XNOR? (Without
inverting the output) …done
B

A
AxorB
B_bar

To change to XNOR just interchange the B and B-Bar inputs

12) How do you detect if two 8-bit signals are same? ...XNOR and AND …we should get a 1…
done

13) How do you detect a sequence of "1101" arriving serially from a signal line? ……..done

14) Design any FSM in VHDL or Verilog.

Computer Architecture:

1) What is pipelining?...done

2) What are the five stages in a DLX pipeline?..done

3) For a pipeline with 'n' stages, what’s the ideal throughput? What prevents us from achieving
this ideal throughput?....throuput=1 …bubbles prevent….due to data, control and structural
hazards….done

4) What are the different hazards? How do you avoid them?...done

5) Instead of just 5-8 pipe stages why not have, say, a pipeline with 50 pipe
stages?....done…branch prediction , data forwarding paths become very long

6) What is Branch Prediction and Branch Target Buffers?...done

7) How do you handle precise exceptions or interrupts?...done

8) What is a cache?...done

9) What's the difference between Write-Through and Write-Back Caches? Explain advantages
and disadvantages of each …..done

Write-Through : whenever a value is updated in ca che, it is written back into the memory.
Advantage: Coherency is maintained easily
Disadvantage: High bandwidth reqd for memory

Write-Back: Memory writing is done only when the cache location which is to be copied is
updated with another value.
Advantage: Less Bandwidth  – faster also
Disadvantage: Cache coherency problem in multi-processors

10) Cache Size is 64KB, Block size is 32B and the cache is Two-Way Set Associative. For a 32-
bit physical address, give the division between Block Offset, Index and Tag ….done

11) What is Virtual Memory?....done

12) What is Cache Coherency?...done

A protocol for managing the caches of a multiprocessor system so that no data is lost or
overwritten before the data is transferred from a cache to the target memory

13) What is MESI?

Processors providing cache coherence commonly implement a MESI protocol - where the letters
of the acronym represent the four states that a cache line may be in:
Invalid
This cache line is not valid
Exclusive
This cache has the only copy of the data. The memory is valid.
Shared
More than one cache is holding a copy of this line. The memory copy is valid.
Modified
The line has been modified. The memory copy is invalid.
This shud be enuf, but if more details needed see:
http://ciips.ee.uwa.edu.au/~morris/CA406/cache_coh.html

14) What is a Snooping cache?...done

Snooping -> A technique used in multi processors for maintaining cache coherency. When any
variable is updated in a particular processor’s cache, there are 2 ways it can be updated in the
other processors :

1. Write invalidate: Invalidate the caches of all other processors for the particular block and then
when there is a read or write request, it will result in a miss and will be directed to the main
memory.
2. Write update: Broadcast the new changed data to all caches as soon as it is changed along with
the write update signal.

15) What are the components in a Microprocessor?...done

16) What is ACBF(Hex) divided by 16?convert to decimal and then divide …done

17) Convert 65(Hex) to Binary ….1100101..octal is groups of 3 and hex is groups of 4…

18) Convert a number to its two's complement and back ….done

19) The CPU is busy but you want to stop and do some other task. How do you do it?..done

2.Hitequest.com
 Two capacitors are connected in parallel through a switch. C1= 1uF, C2= 0.25uF. Initially
switch is open,C1 is charged to 10V. What happens if we close the switch? No loss in the wires
and capacitors.

8uC and 2uC

Hint from Hitequest

 You have 2 switches to control the light in the long corridor. You want to be able to turn the
light on entering the corridor and turn it off at the other end. Do the wiring circuit.

Hint from Hitequest

 This question is based on the previous one, but there are 3 switches that can turn on and off a
light in the room. How to wire them up?

hint Hint from Hitequest

 What will be the voltage level between the 2 capacitors? The Vcc = 10v DC.
Sent by Tanh, VLSI engineer 

Hint from Hitequest

 Suppose, you work on a specification for a system with some digital parameters. Each
parameter has Min,Typ and Max colomns. In what column would you put a Setup time and a
Hold time?

Hint from Hitequest

 Design a simple circuit based on combinational logic to double the output frequency.

Hint from Hitequest

 8bit ADC with parallel output converts input signal into digital numbers. You have to come up
with the idea of a circuit , that finds MAX of every 10 numbers at the output of the ADC.

Hint from Hitequest

 Implement comparator that compares two 2-bit numbers A and B. The comparator should
have 3 outputs: A > B, A < B, A = B. Do it two ways:
- using combinational logic;
- using multiplexers. Write HDL code for your schematic at RTL and gate level.
 Hint from Hitequest

 A small computer has an 8 bit CPU and only one register.

XOR - is the only assembly command it understands.
How to set a second bit of the register ?
The initial state of the register is unknown.

Hint from Hitequest

 You have 8 bit ADC clocking data out every 1mS. Design a system that will sort the output
data and keep a statistics how often each binary number appears at the output of ADC.

Hint from Hitequest

 What types of flip-flops do you know?

Hint from Hitequest

 Implement D- latch from

- RS flip flop;
- multiplexer.

Hint from Hitequest

 How to convert D-latch into JK-latch and JK-latch into D-latch?

Hint from Hitequest

 You have two counters to 16, built from negedge D- FF . First circuit is synchronous and
second is "ripple" (cascading). Which circuit has a less propagation delay?

Hint from Hitequest

 What is the difference between flip-flop and latch?

Write an HDL code for their behavioral models.

Hint from Hitequest

 Describe the oper ation of DAC? What are the most important parameters of DAC? Do we
really need both INL and DNL to estimate linearity?
 Hint from Hitequest

 Compare briefly all types of ADC,that you know .

Hint from Hitequest

 How will the output signal of an ideal integrator look like after
- a positive pulse is applied to the input;
- a series of 10 positive pulses ?

Hint from Hitequest

 how to design a divide-by-3 counter with equal duty cycle ?

question from abc.

Hint from Hitequest

 For an 8-bit flash A/D converter with an input range f rom 0V to 2.55V, describe what happens
when the input voltage changes from 1.27V to 1.28V

 Your system has 2 memory cells and ALU. The ALU can only perform XOR operation. How
to swap the contence of the memory cells ? …xor a and b…xor the result with a and store in
a…xor the result with b and store in b.

 I swapped 2 transistors in CMOS inverter (put n-transistor at the top and p-transistor at the
bottom). Can this circuit work as a noninverting buffer?
(By E.Martovetsky,design eng from Transmeta)

Hint from Hitequest

 Convert D-latch into divider by 2.

What is the max clock frequency the circuit can handle ?
T_setup= 6nS
T_hold = 2nS
T_propagation = 10nS
 Hint from Hitequest

 The circle can rotate clockwise and back. Use minimum hardware to build a circuit to indicate
the direction of rotating.

Hint from Hitequest

 For ATE engineers (semiconductor test):

Draw a shmoo plot of two parameters: Clock period Tclk and setup time Tsetup.

 For chip design/test/product engineers :

An IC device draws higher current when temperature gets:
- higher
- lower

Hint from Hitequest

 To enter the office people have to pass through the corridor. Once someone gets into the office
the light turns on. It goes off when noone is present in the room. There are two registration
sensors in the corridor. Build a state machine diagram and design a circuit to control the light.

 A voltage source with internal impedance Z_source = 50 OHm is connected to a transmission

line with Z = 50 OHm. Z_load is also 50 OHm.
The voltage source generates a single voltage step 1V.
What will be the voltage level on the load:
a) 2V , because the reflected signal will be in-phase with the incident signal;
b) 0.33V , because the voltage is devided between Z_source , Z_load and Z_transm.line;
c) 0.5V , because the voltage is devided between Z_source and Z_load.

Hint from Hitequest

 Draw a transistor schematic of NOR gate,it's layout and a cross section of the layout.
This question is quite popular.

 The silicon of a new device has memory leak. When all "0" are written into RAM, it reads
back all "0" whithout any problem. When all "1" are written, only 80% of memory cells are read
back correctly. What can be possibly the problem with the RAM?
Michael Altshuler, product engineer.

 Draw a CMOS inverter. Why does CMOS technology dominate in VLSI manufacturing?
Leon Backer, DFT engineer

 Design a FIFO 1 byte wide and 13 words deep. The FIFO is interfacing 2 blocks with different
clocks. On the rising edge of  clk the FIFO stores data and increments wptr. On the rising edge of 
clkb the data is put on the b-output,the rptr points to the next data to be read.
If the FIFO is empty, the b-output data is not valid. When the FIFO is full the existing data should
not be overriden.
When rst_N is asserted, the FIFO pointers are asynchronously reset.

module fifo1 (full,empty,clk,clkb,ain,bout,rst_N)

output [7:0] bout;
input [7:0] ain;
input clk,clkb,rst_N;
output empty, full;
reg [3:0] wptr, rptr;
...
endmodule

Hint from Hitequest

 What does CMOS stand for? VLSI? ASIC?

This was in the series of quick questions in the interview at Analog Devices. We use these
abbreviations daily, but not everyone remembers what they stand for.

Hint from Hitequest

 Design a COMBINATIONAL circuit that can divide the clock fr equency by 2.

 Design a 2bit up/down counter with clear using gates. (No verilog or vhdl)

 We have a circular wheel with half painted black and the other half painted white. There are 2
censors mounted 45 degree apart at the surface of this wheel (not touching the wheel) which give
a "1" for black and "0" for white passing under them. Design a circuit to detect which way the
wheel is moving. Can not assume any fixed position for start.

 We have a fifo which clocks data in at 100mhz and clocks data out at 80MHz. On the input
there is only 80 data in any order during each 100 clocks. In other words, a 100 input clock will
carry only 80 data and the other twenty clocks carry no data (data is scattered in any order). How
big the fifo needs to be to avoid data over/under-run.

Hint from Hitequest

 Instead of specifying SETUP and HOLD time, can we just specify a SETUP time for '1' and a
SETUP time for '0'?

 Here some hardware digital design specific questions, offered by Suhas:

(1) When will you use a latch and a flipflop in a sequential design?
(2) Design a 1-bit fulladder using a decoder and 2 "or" gates?
(3) You have a circuit operating at 20 MHz and 5 volt supply. What would you do to reduce the
power consumption in the circuit- reduce the operating frequency of 20Mhz or reduce the power
supply of 5Volts and why?
(4) In a nmos transistor, how does the current flows from drain to source in saturation region
when the channel is pinched off?
(5) In a SRAM circuit, how do you design the precharge and how do you size it?
(6) In a PLL, what elements(like XOR gates or Flipflops) can be used to design the phase
detector?
(7) While synthesis of a design using synopsys design compiler, why do you specify input and
output delays?
(8) What difference do you see in the timing reports for a propogated clock and an ideal clock?
(9) What is timeborrowing related to Static timing anaylsis in P rimetime?

3.Verilog questions

VERIFICATION:

1. Difference between $display and $monitor and $write.

 $display displays variable values using specified format. Also prints new line.
 $monitor display variable only on change in value.
 $write behaves the same as $display. Only difference is it does not print new line.
2. Difference between compiled code and normal simulator.
A compiled code simulator compiles all the files(design and verification) and writes out
an executable(similar to a.out, for people familiar with C language). The engineer then
needs to run this executable in order to perform the simulation.
This simulator will speed up the simulation since it need not compile each and every file
for every simulation run. It will detect the files that are modified and compile those files
and files that depend on those modified files.
A normal simulator performs compilation and execution in the s ame step.
So it has to compile each and every file whenever a simulation is performed.
3. How do you ensure data integrity?
Three most popular ways to ensure data integrity in a system are
a) Parity
b) CRC(Cyclic Redundancy Check)
c) ECC(Error Correcting Code)
Parity is calculated by doing a XOR on all the bits in the data or the address bus. On the
sending side(or source side) parity is generated and transmitted.
On the receiving side(or sink side) parity is received and checked. If there is any error in
the transmission, it is detected on the r eceive side. If more than one bit is flipped during
transmission, Parity may not detect the error. In such systems we use CRC or ECC.
CRC is implemented using a pre-designed mathematical polynomial. CRC has a very
good probability of detecting all kinds of errors during transmission. So it is more
powerful than using Parity. Both Parity and CRC can only detect the error. They cannot
correct the error. If error correction feature is necessary, then ECC needs to be used.
ECC can also be implemented by ASIC designer. This method of data integrity can detect
and CORRECT errors. There are many types of ECC. You need to pick a method depending on
the level of data integrity your system needs.

VERILOG:

1. Wire and register.Differences.

A register is used when you want to store information in one clock cycle and access that
same information in the next clock cycle. A wire is used for connectivity.
2. Blocking and Non-blocking assignments*
Case I: Blocking Procedural Assignments
Initial begin
#1 a=b;
#1 c=d;
#1 e=f;
end
In this case, as soon as the initial block is entered, we wait for 1time unit and then sample
the value of b and assign that value of b to a. Then wait for 1 more time unit, sample the
value of d and assign that value of d to c and so on.
Case II: Blocking Intra-procedural assignment
Initial begin
a= #1 b;
c= #1 d;
e= #1 f;
end
In this case, as soon as the initial block is entered, we sample the value of b, then wait for
1 time unit and assign that value of b to a. Then sample the value of d, wait for 1 more
time unit, and assign that value of d to c and so on.
Case III: Non-Blocking procedural assignment
Initial begin
#1 a <= b;
#1 c <= d;
#1 e <= f;
end
In this case, as soon as the initial block is entered, we wait for 1time unit and then sample
the value of b and assign that value of b to a. Then wait for 1 more time unit, sample the
value of d and assign that value of d to c and so on. Because its non-blocking assignment,
the assignment is made at the END of the timestep.
Case IV: Non-Blocking Intra-procedural assignment
Initial begin
a<= #1 b;
c<= #1 d;
e<= #1 f;
end
In this case, as soon as the initial block is entered, we sample the value of b,d and f, then
wait for 1 time unit and assign that value of b to a, value of d to c and the value of f to e.
3. Model transport and inertial delays.*
In some circuits, if the delay at the input is less than the #delay specified during
sampling, that delay is not propagated to the output. Such a delay is called inertial delay.
The circuit has ‘inertia’ because its response is not tracking the input correctly. If you
want the input delay to be propagated to the output under all conditions, you should use
non-blocking intra procedural assignment statements. This example is shown in Case IV
above. When the delay at the input is always propagated to the output it is referred to as
the transport delay.
4. Timescale. Time wheel advances by multiple of the precision. If timescale is 1ns/1us,
then to advance 1 ns, the timewheel scans its queues 10^6 times. So care should be taken
when defining timescale. Defining a higher resolution will slow down simulation.
5. Bit wise,unary and logical operators*
Consider two 4-bit operands A and B.
 In a bitwise operation between them, each bit of A is operated with the corresponding bit
of B.
In logical operation between them, the value of A(or B) as a single unit is considered as a
1 or a 0. If the value of A is 4’b0000, then its value is 0, otherwise its value is non-zero.
A unary operation is performed on a single operand. Each bit is operated upon by the
next contiguous bit.
6. What is the difference between task and function.
Task can have delays, functions cannot.
Function has only input parameters and returns a single value named after itself. Tasks can
have inout, inputs and outputs.
Tasks define new hardware. Functions define a new operation.
7. Difference between casex and case statements:
Casex is used when the comparand or the value has x in it. Case statement is used when
there are no x’s involved in the comparison.
8. Write code to detect the positive edge and the negative edge of a signal.
I am writing the important section of the code.
Module (…);
…
…
Always @(posedge clk) begin
Data_dly <= data;
Pos_edge = !data_dly && data;
Neg_edge = !data && data_dly;
…
…
endmodule
9. What is defparam used for?
Defparam is used to override the parameter declarations during run-time. For example, if 
you use parameter to declare a value in your testbench, say,
Parameter LOOP = 10;
In each and every testcase the value of LOOP is 10. defparam gives you the option of 
changing this value in different testcases. If you want to set the value of LOOP to 20 in
testcase1.v file, you need to use defparam in this file.
Defparam testbench.LOOP= 20;
10. Detecting async patterns?(hunt state and sync state, 1bit input pipe, n bit input pipe.
SYNC word across two different clocks,SYNC word not across two different clocks)
11. == and ===
== is used to detect equality, if both comparands are equal, this check is satisfied.
=== is used to check identity, if both comparands are identical(in terms of x and z) this
check is satisfied.
12. What is a compiler directive (‘include and ‘ifdef)
Compiler directive is a compile time option. It tells the compiler which part of the code to
compile. On the other hand defparam is a run time option. The compiler directive
‘include is used to include a particular section of Verilog code in another file. The
compiler directive ‘ifdef is used to give the option of compiling two different files to the
engineer. For example the ASIC verification engineer can set up the same file for rtl level
simulation and gate level simulation. In that case ‘ifdef option gives flexibility to pick rtl
or gate level. On the command line, you need to use +define+ in order to trigger the
appropriate ‘ifdef code option.

 LOGIC DESIGN :
 1. DeMorgan’s laws.
(A+B)’ = A’ . B’
(A.B)’ = A’ + B’
2. Big benefit of XOR?(Data+ code word <=> Data)
An important property of XOR functionality is
A^B=C
C^A=B
C^B=A
XOR is therefore used during encoding and decoding. In the above example you can
consider A as the data word tobe encoded. B is the key used in the encoding process. C is
the encoded word. On the receive side, C is received and XOR-ed with the key B to get
the data word A, back.
3. CPU has one register which is 16 bits. How do you set bit 7 to 1 and all the other bits to
0. XOR is the only instruction that is understood by the machine.
Lets say the name of the 16 bit register is A.
A = A ^ A ;  this operation sets all 16 bits of A to 0.
A = A ^ 16’b0000_0000_1000_0000;  this operation sets bit 7 to 1
4. Swap two registers without using temp register (use XOR).
Lets name the two registers as X and Y. The following are the series of operations which
will swap the values of registers X and Y.
X = X ^ Y;
Y = Y ^ X;
X = X ^ Y;
5. What is the difference between combinational and sequential logic. When do you use
either.
When data in current clock need to be stored and accessed in a future clock you need a
sequential logic. Sequential logic is clocked, so it is either a latch or a flop. Combinational logic
is independent of clock and hence asynchronous. Examples are multiplexers, decoders, next_state
logicand output logic in state machines etc.
6. How is a latch different froma flop.
Latch is a level sensitive storage device. Flop is an edge sensitive storage device. Latch has
less area, faster since only 2 gate delays are involved and has a quicker response time. But it
is asynchronous and glitchy. Also there are testability issues with using latches. Flops are
more commonly used in commercial chip designs.
7. Half and Full Adder
Half Adder: Sum = A ^ B; Carry = A & B;
Full Adder: Sum = A ^ B ^ Cin; Carry = A.B + B.Cin + A.Cin;
In a half adder we cannot account for the Carry from the previous column.
It is very similar to the decimal addition. If you have a carry from one column to the next
the next column has to include that carry.
A full adder is capable of doing that. In summary, to add two 4bit numbers, you need 4
full adders connected in series.
8. What are Mealy and Moore state machines.
Mealy State Machine has outputs that are afunction of the current state and primary
inputs.
9. Moore State Machine has outputs that are a function of the current state only.
10. Use 4 states to detect more than one 1’s in the last 3 states.
always @ (state or bit_in) begin
case (state)
S0: // 00
detect_out = 0;
 if (bit_in) next_state = S1;
else next_state = S0;
S1: // 01
if (bit_in) begin
detect_out = 1;
next_state = S3;
end
else begin
detect_out = 0;
next_state = S2;
end
S2: // 10
if (bit_in) begin
detect_out = 1;
next_state = S1;
end
else begin
detect_out = 0;
next_state = S0;
end
S3: // 11
detect_out = 1;
if (bit_in)
next_state = S3;
else
next_state = S2;
endcase
end

2nd answer:
module pattern_detect(clk, rst, data_in, pattern);
input clk, rst, data_in;
output pattern;
reg pattern;
reg pipe1, pipe2;
always @(posedge clock or negedge rst)
if(rst) {pipe1, pipe2} = 2’b0;
else {pipe1, pipe2} <= {data_in, pipe1};
assign pattern = (pipe1 + pipe2 + data_in) > 1;
endmodule

4.This website has a lot of questions which are related to interviews and jobs.
http://www.vlsibank.com/ 

5.http://www.bawankule.com/verilogcenter/quest.html

6.

COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE QUESTIONS

1. For a single computer processor computer system, what is the purpose of a processor cache and
describe its operation?
2. 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?
3. Explain the difference between write through and write back cache.
4. Are you familiar with the term MESI?
5. Are you familiar with the term snooping?

1. Describe a finite state machine that will detect three consecutive coin tosses (of one coin) that
results in heads.
2. In what cases do you need to double clock a signal before presenting it to a synchronous state
machine?

1. You have a driver that drives a long signal & connects to an input device. At the input device
there is either overshoot, undershoot or signal threshold violations, what can be done to correct
this problem?

2. Finite state machines:

(2.1) Design a state-machine (or draw a state-diagram) to give an output '1' when the # of A's are
even and # of B's are odd. The input is in the form of a serial-stream (one-bit per clock cycle).
The inputs could be of the type A, B or C. At any given clock cycle, the output is a '1', provided
the # of A's are even and # of B's are odd. At any given clock cycle, the output is a '0', if the
above condition is not satisfied.

(2.2).To detect the sequence "abca" when the inputs can be a b c d.

10. Given a circuit and its inputs draw the outputs exact to the timing.

11. Given an inverter with a particular timing derive an inverter

using the previous one but with the required timing other than the
previous one.

13. Some problems on clamping diodes.

Logic design:

4. Design a finite state machine to give a modulo 3 counter when x=0

and modulo 4 counter when x=1.

3. What will be the voltage at the output node of a tristate buffer

in its high impedence state. He gave a waveform for the input and
asked me to draw the output waveform for that. …..done

6. He asked me about the electron migration effect and methods to

avoid it. ….done

Computer Architecture Questions:

1. Explain what is DMA?
2. what is pipelining?
3. what are superscalar machines and vliw machines?
4. what is cache?
5. what is cache coherency and how is it eliminated?
6. what is write back and write through caches?
7. what are different pipelining hazards and how are they eliminated.
8. what are different stages of a pipe?
9. eplain more about branch prediction in c ontrolling the control hazards
10. Give examples of data hazards with pseudo codes.
11. Caluculating the number of sets given its way and size in a cache?
12. How is a block found in a cache?
13. scoreboard analysis.
14. What is miss penalty and give your own ideas to eliminate it.
15. How do you improve the cache performance.
16. Different addressing modes.
17. Computer arithmetic with two's complements.
18. About hardware and software interrupts.
19. What is bus contention and how do you eliminate it.
20. What is aliasing?
21) What is the difference between a latch and a flip flop?
22) What is the race around condition? How can it be overcome?
23) What is the purpose of cache? How is it used?
24) What are the types of memory management?

Notes:
1) gain of a MOSFET has a negative temp coeff…
2) The gain of a MOS transistor has a negative temperature coefficient: the gain
decreases as the temperature increases. Since the gains of the parallel transistors
can never be perfectly matched, one will have higher gain and conduct more
current than the others. However, this will cause increased h eat dissipation,
lowering the gain. Therefore, parallel MOS transistors will automatically match
each other. The gain of a bipolar transistor, however, increases with temperature.
The highest gain transistor will conduct more current, dissipate more power, and
increase its gain even further. This process is called thermal runaway and can
destroy the devices involved if the current is not somehow limited. Therefore,
MOS devices are often connected in parallel, while bipolar devices are usually
not. Designers using a BiCMOS process should keep this in mind.

 So what if we have noise?

 If the noise is less than the noise margin, nothing happens
 Static CMOS logic will eventually settle to correct output even if disturbed by large noise
spikes
 –  But glitches cause extra delay
 –  Also cause extra power from false transitions
 Dynamic logic never recovers from glitches
 Memories and other sensitive circuits also can produce the wrong answer
 What if pulldown network is ON during precharge?
 Use series evaluation transistor to prevent fight.
 
precharge transistor  Y Y

Y
 A inputs inputs
f f 
foot

footed unfooted

 Dynamic gates require monotonically rising inputs during evaluation

 –  0 -> 0
 –  0 -> 1
 –  1 -> 1
 –  But not 1 -> 0
violates monotonicity
during evaluation
 A

 Precharge Evaluate Precharge

Output should rise but does not