VLSI DV Interview Puzzles · All levels

Difficulty Guide

What Easy / Medium / Hard mean here and how interviewers escalate within a single puzzle.

Difficulty levels

  • Easy: one rule in play; expected if you know the language.

  • Medium: two interacting rules (e.g. signedness + shift, or solve order + dist).

  • Hard: subtle ordering/scheduling/solver interaction that even experienced engineers miss.

How a single puzzle escalates

Interviewers rarely switch puzzles. They mutate one: change blocking to nonblocking, add disable iff, flip |-> to |=>, add solve...before, or move the sample point. Each puzzle's follow-up shows the escalation to expect.