Novell Interview Experience

INFORMATION Profile: Technical Associate CTC: Rs. 6,19,063/ Elegibility: 1. Branches: B.Tech. ECE, CSE, IT ; M.Tech. CSE, Software Engg, Information Security ; MCA 2. CPI Cutoff: 7.5 & above Type: Full Time Job Location: Bangalore PROCESS IN BRIEF

1. Pre-Placement Talk (PPT) (50-60 min in morning) 2. Written Test (70 min) 3. Interviews of Shortlisted candidates. (50-60 min)

WRITTEN TEST There were 9 sets of question papers, I got Set-4 Section 1: Aptitude, 15 Ques, (15 min) 1. Sentence Rearrangement (5 Ques) 2. Quantitative Aptitude (5 Ques) 3. Passage Based Numerical Problems (5 Ques): It was like this, There are two friends Amar & Prem, both deposited some amount of money in bank, at interest rate of 5% per year, calculated on amount at the end of the year. At the end of first year, Amar withdrew 50% of amount & Prem withdrew Rs. 11,500. At the dont remember after that..

 Section 2: Systems Programming, 25 Ques (20 min) 1. Few Questions on OS: 1. Which of the following Non-Preemptive scheduling has best response time? a. FCFS b. SJF c. Round-Robin d. None

2. Questions on Binary Semaphore & Mutex 2. Rest on DS: 1. How many pointers are needed to implement a circular queue (except the internal next pointers). Section 3: C Programming, 20 Ques (20 min) 1. 3 questions on Recursion 2. 2 questions on MACROs Do not remember rest..!! INTERVIEW

The interview was a equi-mix of questions from Electronics, C, OS, Puzzle & HR. Since my branch is ECE, a few questions were from Electronics core!! 1. What is Digital Electronics? 2. What is Computer Organisation? (Actually they were my AOIs) 3. Are you familiar with MOSFET? Explain its working? Ans: First, I described the physical structure: 4 terminal device Drain-Source: n+ type Substrate: p-type Gate: Si Oxide Layer

Then I described the IDS vs VGS characteristics, IDS vs. VDS characteristics & pinchoff condition.

4. If we form a metalthin oxide junction over GATE metal contact, then what change in working will be observed? (The oxide is very thin)
VGS Oxide Layer

Source

Drain

My Ans: The device will work the same (May be a wrong ans..) 5. If we remove the oxide from substrate-oxide-metal junction, (i.e. metal forms junction with substrate) then what will be the changes? (The oxide is very thin)

VGS Oxide Layer

Source

Drain

My Ans: Since Metal-oxide-metal junction form a capacitor so it can store the charge, however, on removing VGS, the charge will decay Here, he interrupted me and said: Assume leakage capacitance is zero. Then I said it can act as a memory cell. He said OK and told me that it is the basic design of a memory cell of Flash Memory, and that it is called Floating Gate. 6. Implement the library function char* strtok (char*, char)? Explanation of problem: The strtok() stands for string tokenize. Its first argument is pointer to string & second arg is a delimiter, i.e. the function returns original string till it finds the delimiter character where it inserts \0 and thus it returns substring of original string till the delimiter char.

Suppose str[]=My name is XYZ & space = ; then first call to strtok() as strtok(str, space) should return My substring. Now if second call to strtok is made as strtok(NULL, space) then it should return name, third call returns is and so on, till it is not called with any other string as first arg. If all words get finished it should return NULL. Similarly if first call is strtok(NULL, space) then it should return NULL. My Solution: It is obvious that to implement such a function, we need to store the string in the called function. First, I used a second pointer & malloc to allocate required memory, but he advised me that using malloc inside a library function is not a good approach as user doesnt know about it, or even if knows he then he may have to explicitly deallocate that memory which he himself never allocated. I also gave a thought to it and it came to my mind that if we allocate memory using malloc we will not be able to free the memory inside the function, since we need it at second call. Then, he gave me a hint to use any other method of storage. After some time of thinking I got the answer & I used static storage to save the base address of passed string if it is not NULL, and if it is NULL use last saved address. 7. Implement a queue using stack. Ans: I said we can do it using two stacks. He asked me if I already know the solution. I said yes, so he dropped that question. 8. (Puzzle) There are 25 horses, and a race track which can accommodate a mximum of 5 horses at once. You do not have a timer, i.e. in a race you can only decide who is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th but cant measure the exact time taken. How many minimum number of races wil be required to find the fastest, 2nd fastest & the 3rd fastest horse. Ans: Find it on INTERNET. 9. You have a multiprocessor environment, what all conditions you will consider while writing a program.

Ans: It is an OS one.. I dont know much.. However he gave me a hint to use semaphore & mutex. 10. Few HR Questions. 11. Find nth node from end in a linked list. Ans: Use a pointer to reach to nth node from beginning, then start another pointer which moves with the first one at same rate. When the first pointer reaches at end, the second pointer is at nth node from last..!! 12. Write prototype, Call & definition of a swap function? Ans: Thats a sitter 13. Do the swap without using third variable. Ans: Either use Addition-subtraction or XOR operation or any other method you know. 14. Predict output: for(int i=0; i<4 ; ++i) { if(i=0) printf(I am zero); else printf(I am not zero); }