Samsung Verification Engineer Interview

In this round, you'll spend an hour with two experienced verification engineers. They'll kick off the interview by giving you insights into the role and details about the company. Beyond this, here's what you can expect

• Questions about your background and professional experience 
• As the interview progresses, you'll dive into the technical questions related to SV and UVM. For instance, they might ask you to demonstrate your ability to program assertions and constraints in System Verilog. 
• Further, questions about your past projects and work experiences are common. For instance, you might be asked to discuss a particularly challenging verification task you encountered, how you tackled it, etc. Here, make sure you articulate your contributions and problem-solving approaches in previous roles.

This round, lasting 1 hour and led by 2 managers, covers several subjects:

• Memory Systems; these would typically revolve around memory and DRAM-related topics. You will be expected to demonstrate in-depth knowledge of memory systems.
• System Verilog (SV) and Verification Methodology (UVM): Expect questions that delve into your experience with SV features relevant to verification, such as assertions, constraints, and interfaces. The interviewers may ask you to explain how you've used UVM in your projects and to discuss the advantages of adopting a UVM-based methodology. For instance, they might present a scenario where you need to instantiate a UVM agent and describe the interactions between its components. Be prepared to showcase your understanding of SV and UVM by drawing on practical examples from your past work.
• Coding Exercise: As a part of this round, coding exercises will also be included. For example, you might be asked to code in System Verilog, specifically addressing clocking signals and other relevant components of integrated circuits. Or, you might be given a scenario where you need to write System Verilog code to model a specific memory access pattern. The interviewers would then inquire about your understanding of various memory architectures and ask you to solve problems related to optimising memory usage in a hypothetical design.
• SV Data types and OOPs: A portion of this interview will focus on System Verilog (SV) data types and Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) concepts. For example, they might ask you to describe a situation where you used inheritance to create reusable verification components or how encapsulation improved the maintainability of your code. Or questions that assess your understanding of SV data types, including but not limited to bit, logic, int, real, and composite data types like struct and enum would come up.
• Behaviour and General: This part of the interview assesses your overall behaviour, communication skills, and general fit for the team. Expect questions related to your approach to problem-solving, collaboration with team members, and your ability to adapt to different situations. Interviewers may present hypothetical scenarios to gauge how you handle challenging situations or work under pressure.

• Build a verification environment for an ordering block. What would the generation and coverage entail?
• Write an environment verification for a FIFO.
• Write verification for image processing to fix bad pixels.
• Write Verilog code to generate a clock with a 25% duty cycle. Include questions on the case equality operator and basic gates using a mux.
• Build a stack component using a simple memory component.
• Write code for a driver class in UVM.
• Design a testbench for a complex bus protocol, detailing how you would ensure thorough coverage.
• Implement a scoreboard in SystemVerilog for a multi-channel communication system.
• Describe your approach to handling asynchronous resets in your verification environments.
• Write a SystemVerilog constraint to model a specific timing requirement in your verification environment.
• Explain the benefits and drawbacks of using SystemVerilog interfaces in your verification architecture.