(Medium) Conceptual Scoreboarding Question - FAANG

Hi all,

I apologize, it’s been a really long time since my last post! Been distracted heavily by work and life, ya know….

But in this time, I have actually heard about some really good interview questions being asked in DV interviews.

This conceptual one was asked at a FAANG company very recently, and is a great one for DV engineers of all levels…..

Here is the question:

Suppose you are tasked with building a scoreboard for a DUT, which takes a continuous bitstream as input and outputs a continuous bitstream as long as the input data is valid (there is also a valid signal input to the DUT).

(Question is open ended, not much info provided about the DUT other than the DUT keeps outputting a continuous bitstream as long as the input valid bitstream is provided to the DUT).

Design a scoreboard that prints an error if there is a data mismatch between output and input and prints the exact bits that mismatched. For this exercise, you need not write any code, but you must describe the following.

1. Data structures you would use.

2. Algorithms for mismatch detection (simple FIFO scoreboard or something more complex?, etc).

Try your hand at the above question, even working through it will really help you build confidence before your next DV interview.

As always, remember to tell your friends in DV to subscribe to Debug Daily! Good luck!