senior fpga design engineer Questions & Answers

[DNA2683]

hi guys,

as always when i have a problem i writing on this forum.

I am looking for candidates for the project that i manage.
I have some background in the FPGA.
I interviewed for job "senior fpga design engineer"
It is important to me that the candidate will be with knowledge in Altera's SoC

Could you please help me and give me a few questions with answers so that I can check if a suitable candidate for the position?

thanks for the help

 

[shaiko]

Altera's SoC

The FPGAs with an embedded ARM cores?
Or just soft Nios processors?

 

[DNA2683]

The FPGAs with an embedded ARM cores?
Or just soft Nios processors?

embedded ARM cores,
im looking for a questions to test the candidate knowledge on:
1. fpga architecture
2. VHDL code.
3. interfaces (such as PCIE, DDR3..)
4. embedded ARM

its impotent to me to find the right guy because i have only one position


thanks for the help

 

[shaiko]

This has good questions on the VHDL part:
https://vlsiinterviewquestionsandtests.blogspot.co.il/2010/06/what-do-you-mean-by-hdls-hardware.html

A few questions I would ask:

1. What is Metastability and what are its effects?
2. What is setup and hold time?
3. What is pipelining?
4. Why do FPGAs have dedicated clock pins? What's so special about them?
5. Describe a design that you think that will best fit an FPGA.
6. Describe a design that you think that will best fit a Microcontroller.
7. What are the difficulties in asynchronous FIFO design?

 

[TrickyDicky]

I highly suggest you find someone that knows what they're talking about to conduct the interviews, because otherwise serious candidates are likely to turn you down, and you'll only end up with really bad candidates.
If you really dont understand the subject matter, the candidates are going to see right through you.