Soc engineer Interview Questions

What was the major challenge you faced while working on this project?

Soc Physical Design Engineer

Interviewed at Apple

4.1★

Mar 23, 2024

What was the major challenge you faced while working on this project?

1. Few questions on writing constraints for certain scenarios. 2. FSM for number divisible by 3 3. UVM subscriber, sequences, TLM ports and FIFO. 4. write code for random number generation for given distribution and ranges. 5. byte addressing in an integer memory system. 6. constrain for non-overlapping segment-addresses generation. 7. Explain any testbench architecture you have worked on. 8. Lots of simple questions to test SystemVerilog and OOP concepts.

SoC Verification Engineer

Interviewed at Apple

4.1★

Mar 23, 2017

1. Few questions on writing constraints for certain scenarios. 2. FSM for number divisible by 3 3. UVM subscriber, sequences, TLM ports and FIFO. 4. write code for random number generation for given distribution and ranges. 5. byte addressing in an integer memory system. 6. constrain for non-overlapping segment-addresses generation. 7. Explain any testbench architecture you have worked on. 8. Lots of simple questions to test SystemVerilog and OOP concepts.

Hold and setup time, FSMs

Soc Design Engineer

Interviewed at Apple

4.1★

Mar 4, 2023

Hold and setup time, FSMs

STA, CTS, Floor planning, Logic Circuits, PNR 1. What is OCV and derate factors 2. Calculation of setup and hold slack (Given values, Thold, Tsetup, Tlogic, derate factors) 3. How to reduce setup violations and hold violations? 4. Difference between H-tree and Mesh? 5. Techniques to reduce clock power? 6. Low power design techniques 7. What is Multi Bit FF? 8. Draw basic logic gates (And) using NOR (NAND) gates? 9. Crosstalk glitches? 10. Placement of macros questions 11. How to calculate channel spacing between macros/ 12. SRAM design questions 13. Physical only cells- Tap cells, Tie cells use and where do we place them 14. How Delay of a net/cell changes with VDD/ 15. Capacitance and Resistance of wire effects on delay and how to reduce it? 16. How to reduce static, Dynamic, short -circuit power? 17. Where to use LVT, HVT cells? 18. Difference between local skew and global skew? 19. Verilog Coding question- Synchronous and Asynchronous DFF 20. What is the use of End cap cells and Decap cells?

Soc Physical Design Engineer

Interviewed at Apple

4.1★

Mar 29, 2026

STA, CTS, Floor planning, Logic Circuits, PNR 1. What is OCV and derate factors 2. Calculation of setup and hold slack (Given values, Thold, Tsetup, Tlogic, derate factors) 3. How to reduce setup violations and hold violations? 4. Difference between H-tree and Mesh? 5. Techniques to reduce clock power? 6. Low power design techniques 7. What is Multi Bit FF? 8. Draw basic logic gates (And) using NOR (NAND) gates? 9. Crosstalk glitches? 10. Placement of macros questions 11. How to calculate channel spacing between macros/ 12. SRAM design questions 13. Physical only cells- Tap cells, Tie cells use and where do we place them 14. How Delay of a net/cell changes with VDD/ 15. Capacitance and Resistance of wire effects on delay and how to reduce it? 16. How to reduce static, Dynamic, short -circuit power? 17. Where to use LVT, HVT cells? 18. Difference between local skew and global skew? 19. Verilog Coding question- Synchronous and Asynchronous DFF 20. What is the use of End cap cells and Decap cells?

Some system verilog Questions