An interview-prep companion to Shen & Lipasti's Modern Processor Design: Fundamentals of Superscalar Processors. The 658-page graduate textbook, distilled into 11 chapters of concept summaries and 146 interview Q&A.
🔗 Live: vutukuribanurohit02.github.io/processor-design-study
Built for students and new grads targeting RTL Design Verification, SoC Integration, Physical Design, and CPU architecture roles at companies like Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm, Intel, Cirrus Logic, and Tenstorrent.
11 chapters covering the full book
| # | Chapter | Topics |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Processor Design | ISA, dynamic-static interface, performance equation |
| 02 | Pipelined Processors | Hazards, forwarding, balancing stages, MIPS R2000 |
| 03 | Memory & I/O | Caches, virtual memory, TLBs, AMAT, DMA |
| 04 | Superscalar Organization | Parallel/diversified/dynamic pipelines |
| 05 | Superscalar Techniques | Tomasulo, register renaming, ROB, load-store ordering |
| 06 | PowerPC 620 | End-to-end OoO case study with measurements |
| 07 | Intel P6 | uops, RAT, ROB, the architecture behind Pentium Pro through modern Intel |
| 08 | Survey of Designs | Speed demons vs brainiacs, Alpha, MIPS, x86-64, SPARC |
| 09 | Branch Prediction | gshare, TAGE, perceptron, BTB, RAS, trace cache |
| 10 | Value Prediction | Value locality, instruction reuse, beyond data flow |
| 11 | Multithreading & CMP | SMT, MESI/MOESI, sequential consistency vs TSO vs relaxed, LL/SC vs CAS |
Plus a one-page cheat sheet and 35-question rapid-fire round for the night before an interview.
- Read mode — Chapter-by-chapter reading. Toggle Single Page or All Chapters. Print-friendly.
- Quiz mode — 10 random questions from the full pool of 146. Score yourself, repeat.
- Flashcard mode — Flip-card drills across the whole deck. Mark known cards to skip on next pass.
Plus live search across every Q&A, progress tracking, and a stats panel showing chapters viewed, questions opened, quiz scores, and time on page.
I built this while prepping for my own ASIC/RTL Design Verification interviews. The Shen & Lipasti textbook is the standard for graduate computer architecture, but at 658 pages it's hard to revisit a week before an interview. I needed something that gave me the same depth in a format I could drill, search, and quiz against.
If you're a student or new grad in the same situation, this should save you a few weeks of synthesis work.
- Single static HTML file — no build step, no framework, no dependencies. Works offline once loaded.
- No tracking, no login, no ads. All progress stored in browser
localStorage. - Hosted on GitHub Pages. Source is this repo.
- ~250 KB total page size. Loads in under a second on most connections.
- Mobile-responsive. Same experience on phone, tablet, laptop.
The site is intentionally simple in implementation but careful in content — every concept was checked against the textbook source, with corrections to common online summaries (e.g. PowerPC 620's reservation-station configuration, Pentium Pro's 4-1-1 decode rules).
Three-pass method works best:
- Skim — read the lede and section headers of each chapter. Build a mental map. (~30 min/chapter)
- Deep read — work through formulas with pencil and paper. Try every Q&A before opening it. (~1–2 hr/chapter)
- Active recall — close the page, explain the chapter aloud in 2 minutes. The places you stumble are exactly where an interviewer will probe.
One-week interview prep priority order: Ch 2 (pipelining) → Ch 5 (OoO techniques) → Ch 3 (memory) → Ch 9 (branch prediction) → Ch 4 (organization) → Ch 11 (multithreading) → fill in remaining chapters.
Found an error? Have a suggestion? Open an issue or message me on LinkedIn.
Banu Rohit Vutukuri — MS Electrical Engineering (Computer & Embedded Systems), University of Houston · December 2025.
Targeting RTL Design Verification, SoC Integration, and Physical Design roles.
LinkedIn · GitHub · vutukuribanurohit02@gmail.com
This guide is a study companion to:
Shen, J. P., & Lipasti, M. H. Modern Processor Design: Fundamentals of Superscalar Processors. Waveland Press.
All concepts and frameworks are credited to the original authors. This guide adds interview-focused synthesis, modern (2024–2025) processor examples, and an interactive presentation. Buy the textbook if you want the full depth — it remains the best superscalar architecture text in print.
Made while interview-prepping. If it helps you land a role, drop a note — I'd love to hear.