Broadcom SDE Interview Questions and Answers

Endianess refers to the order in which bytes are stored in memory. Little endian stores the least significant byte first.

• Check the byte order of a multi-byte integer value

• Use a test value with known byte order to determine the system's endianess

• Check the system's documentation or specifications

• Use a code snippet to determine the endianess

Function pointers can be shared across processes using inter-process communication mechanisms like shared memory, pipes, sockets, etc.

• Function pointers can be stored in shared memory regions that are accessible by multiple processes.

• Processes can communicate with each other using pipes or sockets and pass function pointers as arguments.

• Remote Procedure Call (RPC) mechanisms can also be used to share function pointers a...read more

Binder is a mechanism for inter-process communication in Android.

• Binder allows different processes to communicate with each other.

• It is used for implementing Android's IPC (Inter-Process Communication) system.

• Binder uses a client-server model where the client sends requests to the server and the server responds with the requested data.

• It is used for sharing data between different components of an Android application.

• Bi...read more

sysctrl is a system control utility used to manage system settings and configurations.

• sysctrl is used to manage system settings and configurations such as network settings, power management, and hardware configurations.

• It can be used to start, stop, and restart system services.

• sysctrl is commonly used in Linux and Unix-based operating systems.

• Examples of sysctrl commands include 'sysctrl -p' to reload all settings from...read more

Device tree is a data structure used to describe hardware components in a system and their interconnections.

• Device tree is used in embedded systems to provide a standardized way of describing hardware components.

• It is written in a language called Device Tree Source (DTS) and compiled into a binary format called Device Tree Blob (DTB).

• The device tree is loaded by the bootloader and used by the kernel to configure the ha...read more

4 IPCs used in user level process in Linux

• Message Queues - allows processes to exchange data through messages

• Shared Memory - allows processes to share a portion of memory

• Semaphores - used for synchronization between processes

• Pipes - allows communication between two related processes

Inter-process communication mechanisms like pipes, sockets, message queues, shared memory can be used to call a function from one user process to another.

• Use pipes to establish a unidirectional communication channel between two processes.

• Use sockets to establish a bidirectional communication channel between two processes.

• Use message queues to send messages between processes.

• Use shared memory to share data between proce...read more

Program with 2 threads printing even and odd numbers in sequence. How to make it SMP safe?

• Use mutex locks to ensure only one thread accesses the shared resource (the number to be printed) at a time

• Use condition variables to signal when it's safe for the other thread to access the shared resource

• Use atomic variables to ensure that the shared resource is accessed atomically

• Use thread-safe data structures to store the sha...read more

Array is a collection of elements stored in contiguous memory locations while linked list is a collection of nodes linked by pointers.

• Arrays have fixed size while linked lists can grow or shrink dynamically

• Insertion and deletion is faster in linked lists than arrays

• Accessing elements in arrays is faster than linked lists

• Arrays are better for random access while linked lists are better for sequential access

An array of key-value pairs is the best data structure for a dictionary.

• Use a hash table or a balanced tree to implement the dictionary.

• Keys should be unique and immutable.

• Values can be any data type.

• Access time should be O(1) or O(log n) depending on the implementation.

• Examples: Python's dict, Java's HashMap, C++'s unordered_map.

Hashing is a technique to map data to a fixed-size table. Time complexity of searching a hash table is O(n) in worst case.

• Hashing is used to store and retrieve data quickly

• It uses a hash function to map data to a fixed-size table

• In the best case, searching a hash table takes O(1) time

• In the worst case, all the data maps to the same index and searching takes O(n) time

• Collision resolution techniques like chaining and ope

A linked list is used to store and manipulate a collection of data elements in a linear order.

• Linked lists are commonly used in computer science for implementing data structures like stacks, queues, and hash tables.

• They are also used in operating systems for managing memory allocation.

• For example, a linked list can be used to implement a music playlist where each song is a node and the links between nodes represent the...read more

Implement a stack using a linked list

• Create a Node class with data and next pointer

• Create a Stack class with top pointer

• Push new nodes to the top of the stack

• Pop nodes from the top of the stack

• Check if the stack is empty before popping

BST stands for Binary Search Tree, a data structure used for efficient searching and sorting operations.

• BST is a tree-like data structure where each node has at most two children.

• The left child of a node contains a value less than the parent node, while the right child contains a value greater than the parent node.

• BST allows for efficient searching and sorting operations with a time complexity of O(log n).

• Examples of a...read more

Program to check if a binary tree is a BST

• Traverse the tree in-order and check if the values are in ascending order

• Use a min-max range for each node to check if it satisfies the BST property

• Recursively check if the left and right subtrees are BSTs