I applied through the Qualcomm Careers section in September and received no communication for over two months. Out of the blue, I received a call from HR wanting to schedule a phone screen. Within a couple of days, I was phone screened.

The phone screen was really stimulating, with many questions regarding ASIC verification, memory management, cache coherency, and FPGA-based emulation. We discussed the Palladium/Veloce emulation flow and using emulation for simulation acceleration. It was a nice, two-way discussion that made it fun and lasted about 45 minutes.

I was told the next day that they wanted to set up an onsite interview. However, since it was around Christmas, we were unable to schedule the interview until early January. The team was very flexible regarding the interview schedule, as I fell sick and had a planned vacation, due to which I wasn't able to interview until mid-February.

The onsite interview was short in duration but concentrated in content. I was welcomed by my manager and taken to a conference room for two one-hour group interviews, each with four people.

• The first hour focused on my resume and emulation experience, more relevant to the role.
• The second hour consisted of general ASIC verification questions with a team of four senior staff-level engineers.

I received an offer a week later. However, due to relocation, working out the logistics took almost another month before I could join. The process was very slow overall.

There were two stages of reference checks: the first after the phone screen and the second after the onsite, before the offer was made. There was no HR or personality interview, only technical interviews.

Questions regarding STA mode and Transactor-based Simulation Acceleration:

How would you implement a transactor?

Use SystemC or SystemVerilog, and why?

How will you communicate between the DUT and the transactor testbench?

Explain the PCIe speedbridge interface and how you would debug it.