My Intel Interview - March 2012

My Intel Interview - March 2012

I woke up on the morning of 5^th March 2012 at 6:00 AM and got ready for the Intel Orientation which was scheduled to begin at 8:15. Though I had suggested it to a lot of my friends, to keep copies of their Resumes ready for the interview, I had not done so myself. So soon after the orientation got over at around 10:00 AM I ran to the nearby Xerox shop and got 5 copies of my resume.

However mean while my name had been called for interview and my friend Praneeth messaged me this. I did not panic because I had a 9.8 in the previous semester and knew that I was sure to get placed eventually somewhere... (But intel was  my dream Core Company so I still felt i had done something stupid).

Round 1:

To my surprise, they called my name again at around 10:45 AM and I was called to panel 10 where i met my first interviewer. He seemed more friendly than my friends at MIT Manipal (^_^).

He gave a broad smile and invited me in, we shook hands and he asked me for my resume. He told me “Tell me about yourself, while I quickly glance through your Resume”.  My resume had all my academic score, paper publications and seminar topics in the first page; my projects, academic interest and technical skills in the second page; while the third page had my hobbies, extra-curricular achievements and personal profile.

I introduced myself again and told that i was currently studying Embedded systems and wireless technology under the MS program. By this time he had actually glanced through the whole thing and he started asking me questions based on my resume. He asked me what I “blog” about? I told him that I blog about the things I doubt and the things I observe about the world around me. I gave him examples of my blogs “The road-crossing Algorithm”, in which I had spoken about different things that affected a persons decisions while crossing a road, then I gave another example of my blog “The advice Proximity effect” in which I spoke of different factors what affected the effectiveness of an advice given to another person; I told him things like gender and age were of high importance according to me.

Then he asked me what I enjoy doing during my free time. I told him that I like watching cartoons a lot. He smiled a bit and asked what cartoons I enjoy... I told him that “Captain Planet” has been my all time favourite, other cartoons like “Jonny Quest” and “Dexter’s lab”. 

He asked me how I was able to watch all these cartoons, so I told him that I have downloaded all of the 90s cartoon network cartoons, so he continued.

He asked me if i had any touch of Karate because my resume said that I was a Karate Blue Belt – 2002 (^_~). I told him that I had no touch of karate. 


He next asked me why i had applied for a General Grade Ham Operator License, I told him that I had read that we could do wireless experiments with such a license, more over I told him that with a license I could join a ham club near my home and learn more.

Then he asked me some questions based on my project and paper publication, first he asked on my Fractal Image Compression project, I had good knowledge of this project so I was able to answer well, for instance he asked me where I could use Fractal image compression and how it would help. I told him that it could help in all areas where image capturing and video recording or storing was implemented. For instance, If we could compress a video then there would be more space left to store more videos. I told him that by recognizing some generic patterns, we will be able to eliminate all the images from an album if we are able to regenerate some of these images.

He was happy and next asked me if I had used scripting for validation. I told him that i did not know what validation meant, but I then said that i had used a lot of scripting for my project, for instance, achieving fractal compression using C in Linux needed a lot of scripting knowledge, since we were still learning scripting at that time, initially I told him that I relied a log on my guide; but as we went along I started getting more comfortable with scripting and got good at the subject as well. I also added that while implementing “USB Device Drivers” we needed Awk scripting.

He looked through my resume again and pointed out that I had not done any wireless projects. So I told him that I will be soon be on a Wireless Sensor Network project that used Matlab to implement a Localization Algorithm. 

Then he asked me if I knew about LTE. I told him that I knew LTE stood for Long Term Evolution, but since I had not read recently, I didn’t know much. He suggested me that It was a 4G feature and then asked me to explain Wimax instead. I told him that it was a Wireless internet for long range upto 80 Km support range.

He asked me if i had any job offers earlier. So I told him that i had some from Infosys, Cognizent and Wipro, but since I felt that I could do better if i had higher education, I opted the Embedded systems and Wireless Technology branch at Manipal. So he asked me why i had opted for this particular branch. I told him that in my UG, Embedded systems and Wireless Technology were my most favourate subjects so as soon as I saw a course offering both of these at MIT, I set my mind and just went for it.

He asked me if there is something I wanted to tell him. So i told him that at my college, i found that all teachers were very helpful friendly and we had a very good learning environment.  I also told him that before joining the college, i had not heard of Device Drivers, but now i was beginning to really like DD.

I also told him that while implementing USB device drivers, we had got stuck and had written for “LinuxforU” for help on fixing some bugs. So he asked me whom i contacted. We had implemented the code from Mr. Anil Kumar Pugalia’s article on Device Drivers so I knew the exact answer to this question. I then told him that we got the desired output and gave a demo to my class members on how elegantly a 46 line code could be written to interact with a peripheral using device driver coding.

He then asked if i had any more doubts. So I asked him what kind of job I was looking at over Intel. He told me that they had all kinds of jobs open. He said that they preferred to work on windows platform itself, but recent development in Android had opened several options for Linux platform as well. He then said that Linux was an excellent platform for coding, for which i simply nodded.

This ended the first round interview of Intel. I later got called for a second round...


Round 2:

In my second round interview for Intel, I got called for Panel Number 5, this particular panel was slightly scary because all of my EWT friends who had been there had come out with a sense of dis-satisfaction.

However things worked out well for me because, when I got called, the guy to interview me, was standing outside, so when he held back the door for me to enter, I made my first impression by thanking him for that act. 

Then as I sat down, I handed him a copy of my Resume. He glanced through it. And handed me a plain sheet, when I was about to take out a pen from my bag, he offered me a pencil so I took the pencil instead.

The first question took some time to understand, he asked me to draw a scenario where I was required to handle the lightings, temperature conditions and humidity of an auditorium. Since he had given me a sheet, I began drawing the scenario and as I drew I asked if the auditorium was round/square, I asked if I was free to choose the kind of lighting. I drew the scenario, the sitting arrangement.

He then told me that I was required to come up with a block diagram where I had to keep cost into consideration and design lighting and other conditions for the auditorium. He explained me how one guy could monitor the lighting from the back of the auditorium with a control panel and control the various room conditions from out there. He wanted me to automate that process using a micro-processor. . . (^_^).

Though I initially began drawing a flow chart, he corrected me and told that I had to draw a block diagram instead. At this point, I was not sure what the difference was, because when I sat there it felt the same to me. However, I wrote down the word temperature-sensor and immediately, I knew I had to processor block right next to it. This reminded me the sensor network block diagram which I had studied in WSN class, so I connected a Power Supply block connected to the processor, and a User Interface also via a connection. I then connected a wire from the sensor to the processor.

He asked me how I was going to control temperature from the sensor. So I told him that I would use an air conditioner to make the changes and use the sensor as a detector. Since it is often required to keep the whole room at a constant temperature, I told him that I could directly connect the temperature control to the processor.

He then expanded the question and said that if the auditorium had 100 lights, how I can control the lights like in the case of the guy controlling the lights. I straight away wrote down a light block and connected it to the processor, and told him that I could turn on the whole room on or off using the connection. This was when he stressed that I had to reduce cost while implementing this. My first idea was to connect 2 lights by a common wire so that only 50 wires went to the main control processor.

He was somewhat not fully satisfied with this idea, so he asked if I had some way by which I could still be able to control individual light in the room (or pair in this case). I told him that to monitor the presence of people I could use a IR sensor or an IR camera, which would indicate the Processor about the presence.

But the big problem however was that a typical microprocessor has 40 pins, of which only some could be used at any given point for user application. He asked me if I can come up with some way to use less pins to get the same output. I told him that I could connect a co-processor and give the job of assigning the light to the co-processor this would reduce the load on the main processor to do other activities and let the co-processor take care of the issues of how lighting of the room could be handled.

This was when he pointed out that Processor costs a lot and a co-processor would cost about the same as a processor, this would still keep the costs high, he asked me if there was a way in which I could reduce the cost. I thought for a second, I sent one line from the processor to an “And gate”, and one from the sensor and explained to him. That I would keep the line from the processor always high indicating that power is available to switch on the light. And the input from each sensor would tell the light of the presence of a person under it and switch the appropriate light of the auditorium on. This would eliminate the need for co-processor, reduce cost, reduce circuitry and still meet the requirement. He was impressed but did not look satisfied. However, he said “good” and told me the next question. It was only later when I came out and discussed with my friends that I realized that conventionally using a Multiplexer could help achieve the same lighting requirement.

Second question asked to me was what kind of connection I would make with all the equipments I had told earlier. He gave a spontaneous list which included Near Field Communication, USB, wireless connection and asked me how I would choose among these... I began with the simplest, NFCs can’t be used because of their very short range, centimeters  so I put a cross next to that option. Then I told him that USB too had a limited range of 30 meters and would not suit for an auditorium. However I told him that if I got to design the lighting, I would go for wireless, because it would reduce the wiring cost and would give range sufficient enough to operate from the room mentioned in the previous scenario. He looked satisfied with this answer.

Then he also asked me why I had chosen Embedded Systems and Wireless Technology, since I had already answered this question in the first round I simply repeated it. He asked if I had any experience of designing things like this. This was when I mentioned that I had worked in my uncles company during my engineering vacations. I gave a brief introduction where I mentioned that My uncle was a Mechanical engineer who had good knowledge of VB and CAD and had opened a company that gave a software solution to civil engineers. I told him that I had worked on a lot of things during the initial days because for a short time, the two of us had to do a variety of works required back then in 2006, like finding addresses, writing to civil engineering companies. I told him that in our company, My uncle was a mechanical engineer, I was an Electronics Engineer and we both were giving Civil Solutions by software… This sentence made him give a broad smile.

He asked me if I had any questions for him. I turned the sheet around and asked him if I had missed something in the first question which could help in reducing the cost further. He laughed a bit and told me that I needed to think on that. He again asked me if I had any questions. I said no. Thanked him and returned with a satisfaction of having had a great talk with this guy.

My EWT classmates were happy when I described this round to them. They were expecting that they get called soon, because 4 of them had not yet been called for the first round itself. We chatted some personal stuff and some technical stuff which I could really not concentrate on because the weather that day was strange and I had a minor head-ache just before the second round had begun.

We anxiously waited in the room till 6:00 when the results were announced. I was happy that while calling each name, regardless of whether we knew the person or not, the whole room was clapping. I was however shocked when they called out my name, but was somehow unsure that it was me, I hesitantly got up and all clapped. Then I confirmed with my friends that it was indeed my name. We were required to give our email IDs and phone numbers so they could contact us further. I was very happy from the selection at Intel. I called my mom, some of my relatives, friends and texted a lot of the people on my mobile contact because I had a totally strange feeling after all that.

Yes that was all that happened at the interview, some of the questions asked to my friends included, “Write a code to generate inverted triangle containing Fibonacci numbers”, “Implement an And gate using 4X1 MUX”, “What’s the difference between SAN and NAS?”,  “What is JVM and how does java differ from C++” & many more…