Nvidia Interview Experience For Compiler Intern (6 Months)

I applied for the role of Compiler Intern for Nvidia off-campus on their portal. I applied for the role sometime in September, and based on resume shortlisting, I received an email towards the end of October saying they were interested.

Round-1 Online Test

The first round comprised 21 MCQ questions focused on C/C++, Programming, Data Structures and Compiler Output.

There was one coding question similar to this.

The online test was fairly straightforward if you have strong C/C++ and Data Structures concepts.

I’m not sure how many people got selected for the online test, but 25 made it to the interviews. Out of these 25, some were for Summer Intern roles as well.

Round-2 (Technical Interview)

The entire round was coding-based. I was given a live coding link which already had the code for a program written. The code was written in C, and around 250 lines. I was given 5-10 minutes to analyze the code and understand the program.
Once done, I had to point out any errors I could spot in the program.

The program was trying to Convert a Binary Tree into Doubly Linked List in spiral fashion, which I was able to answer correctly.

There was an error regarding how one function was called by value instead of call by reference which I didn’t catch.
Other than that, I was able to point out few errors in stack implementation, namely, there was no statement to check if stack had overflow or underflown before adding and removing elements respectively.

There were also a small error with respect to typecasting.

I was then made to fix the code using whatever suggestions I had given.

After that, the interviewer asked me if there was a way to avoid overflow/underflow errors without using explicit checks for them.

I answered allocating memory dynamically or using linked list and was asked questions on memory allocation, linked list vs arrays, how memory works with respect to paging, etc.

Suggestions: Make sure to talk out loud the whole time! My interviewer was extremely helpful and would let me know if I was going on the right track with my though process which helped me gain confidence. This was also especially helpful when I was analyzing the code since I talked through all the functions with her one by one.

Tips: Prioritise knowledge of arrays, strings, stacks, queues, linked lists, trees, and heaps. Once you’re comfortable with these, you can start practising other DSA topics as these are the ones most frequently asked in interviews.

Round-3 (Managerial Round)

This round was heavily focused on my resume and past experience. The interviewer asked about my work at my previous internship, my projects, and other experience mentioned on my resume. I ran a couple of my projects during the interview and explained the working.

He asked me why I was interested in the Compiler Intern role to be specific. I explained that I enjoyed courses like Computer Architecture, Compiler Design and Parallel Computing during my B.Tech, and wanted to pursue a role that was a culmination of these courses.

He then asked me various questions from Computer Architecure like:

• Explain how computer memory works.
• How does information travel from Secondary Memory to CPU Registers.
• What is cache memory?
• What are L1, L2, L3 caches?

  He also asked me questions on GPU architecture and CUDA programming since I had a CUDA project on my resume.

• Explain the difference in CPU and GPU architecture?
• How do we manipulate memory in CUDA?

He then asked me to tell my laptop’s architecture. I answered that it was 8 cores and 16 logical processors.

I was then asked to explain logical processors and hyperthreading.

I was also asked questions on Compiler Design, the phases of Compiler Design, the difference between an abstract syntax tree and a semantic syntax tree, lexical analyzer etc.

At the end of the interview, he asked me if I had any questions for him.

I asked him about his experience at the company and what he liked about it.

Approximately a week after the Manager Round, I received a call from Nvidia saying I had been selected!