INTERVIEW QUESTIONS WITH ANSWERS

By

CH.V.V.RAMANA
 HARDWARE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

1. How does the MOSFET works?

A) The source to drain current is controlled by electric field of capacitor formed at gate.
2. What are different types of BJT configurations and when do we use them?
A) Common emitter, Common base, common collector. These are used to obtained
characteristics of Transistor.
3. What is the difference between TTL and COMS?
A) In TTL, basic element is bipolar transistor. In CMOS, N&P channel MOS transistors
arranged in Complement.
4. Which is the most important pin in the microcontroller?
A) Reset pin.
5. Explain about Ground Bounce?
A) The period that to settled to ground from the fluctuations is called Ground Bounce.
6. One question on any kind of sensors you are aware?
A) Hall sensor.
7. What is LVDT?
A) Linear Variable Differential Transformer.
8. What is the difference between Microprocessor &Microcontroller?
A) Microprocessor is only bit addressable.Microcontroler is on chip memory, peripherals, ADC,
DAC etc.
9. What are different types of microprocessor architecture?
A)Von Neumann, Harward.
10. How do you select an op-amp?
A) Depending upon its Linearity, CMRR, input imoedence, output impedence, gain, Accuracy.
11. What are different types of filters?
A) Low pass filter, High pass, Band pass, Band reject filters.
12. Differense between CPLD &FPGA?
A) CPLD (Complex Programmable Logic Devise) IS permanent storage devise program is stored
in Registers. FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) is temporary storage devise program
stored in SRAM.
13. What is clock buffer?
A)Clock buffer is used for to maintain power level.
14. What is jitter?
A)Jitter means time variation of process.
15. What is gain bandwidth product?
A)Gain bandwidth product its constant at some specific value of input frequency, open loop gain
is zero.
16. What are an integrater&differentiator?
A)Integrator: Output is integral form of input.
Differentiator: Output is differential form of input.
17. Define the parameters of an ADC (or) types of ADC?
A)Types of ADC: successive approximation, monolithic ADC.
18. What is slew rate of op-amp, define CMRR, input offset voltage?
A)Slew rate: Maximum rate of change of output voltage with respect to time.
SLEW RATE=MAX dV0/dt.
Input Offset Voltage: It is the voltage applied across input terminals of op- amp to find zero
output Voltage. CMRR: Ratio of differential mode gain to common mode gain.
19. What is sample and hold circuits?
A)Hold circuit holds the signal for some time.
Sampling circuit which samples the signal up to certain range.
20. What is comparator?
A) Comparator compares magnitude of two signals.
21. What is Fan out & Fan In?
A)Fan Out: Maximum number of similar outputs that the gate can drive reliably
FAN In: It is the number of inputs it can handle properly.
22. What are different types of voltage regulators?
A)Switched regulators: Zenar diode as voltage regulator.
Linear regulators: IC 723, IC 78series is positive voltage regulators, 79 series is negative voltage
regulators.
23. What is latch up?
A)Latch up means sending out the data from the latch.
24. What are parameters to be taken into consideration while selecting a MOSFET?
A)Input impedance, characteristics.
25. How do you design a voltage to frequency converter?
A)By using IC 9400, LM 338.
26. What is 8051 architecture?
A)Harvard architecture
27. What is Ethernet communication?
A)Ethernet communication is the communication between the more numbers of systems in
company.
28. What are different types of serial communication?
A)I2C, SPI, RS 232,422,485.
29. What are different types of memory devices?
A) ROM, RAM, SRAM, DRAM and EEPROM.
30. What is main advantage of using bridge rectifier rather than using a full wave rectifier?
A)The percentage of regulation in bridge rectifier is 200*(Rf/Ri).
31. What are applications of Zenar diode?
A) Zenar diode is used for voltage regulation.
32. What are applications of schottky diode?
A) Schottky diode is used in detecting, network in communication and also used in clipping and
Clamping circuits.
33. What is pulse width modulation?
A) The width of pulse is varied in according with the instantaneous values of the carrier
34. What is SMPS & how does it works?
A) SMPS means switch mode power supply
It has single input voltage and it gives many numbers of regulated voltages.
35. What is PID control?
A) PID control means proportional integral and differential control.
36. What are different types of flip flops?
A) J-K flip-flop, R-S flip-flop, T Flip-flop, D Flip-flop, clocked R-S Flip-flop.
37. How does an instrumentation amplifier differs from normal op-amp?
A) The instrumentation amplifier differs from normal op amp because its high gain
38. What is sampling time?
A) The time taken to divide the signal is called sampling time.
39. What is relaxation oscillator?
A) It produces saw tooth wave and it is one of the application of UJT.
40. What is Hysteresis?
A) It is defined as magnitude of error caused in output for given input.
41. What are different applications of comparators?
A) ZCD, Window detector.
42. How does an UJT works?
A)When it is triggerd, emitter current increases until it is limited by emitter power supply.
43. What IS ASIC?
A) ASIC means application specific integrated circuit?
44. How to select a network processor?
A)Depending upon its applications.
45. What are different types of negative devices?
A)Thermister, LDR.
46. What is difference between flip flop & latch?
A)Flip-flop is edge triggered. Latch is level triggered.
47. What are types of errors in ADC &DAC’s?
A)Gain error, offset, and linearity errors.
48. What is Race condition in flip flop?
A)Toggling more than one condition called racing.
49. What is the difference between hard ware reset & soft ware reset?
A)Hardware reset means along with execution of program the system will refresh.
Software reset means entire system will refresh.
50. How do you make sure that the impedance matching between driver & receiver are
maintained?
A)The output impedance of the driver and input impedance of the receiver is equal.
51. What are different types of Gerber’s?
A)The Basic gerber & Extended Gerber the difference is, in basic Gerber all apertures are linked
in different files and where as in Extended Gerber all apertures are linked in a single file.
52. How does impedance mismatch in signal path effect?
A) There are some losses in the signal.
53. How do we call BJT is current controlled device & MOSFET is voltage controlled
device
A)BJT is current controlled device. Because the output current IC is controlled by input current.
Mosfet is voltage controlled device because the mosfet is operated in reverse bias condition
54. What are active & passive devices?
A)Active devices: Transistor,op -amp.
55. What is the difference between positive &negative feedback in amplifiers?
A)Positive feedback amplifiers are oscillators, op- amp etc.
56. What are the advantages of using Darlington pair of transistors?
A)Darlington pair is used to produce high input impedance and high current gain.
57. What is Thyrister &what are its applications?
A) Thyrister is silicon controlled rectifier .it is in rectification, switches.
58. What are different types of semiconductors?
A) Intrinsic & extrinsic semi conductors.
59. Can you explain the applications of Zenar diode, Tunnel diode, and Schottky diode?
A)Zenar diode used for voltage regulation.
Tunnel diode used for fast switching circuits in high frequency oscillator
Short diodes used in clipping and clamping circuits, communications, switches
60. What is the advantage of bridge rectifier when compared to full wave rectifier?
A) The output polarity of bridge rectifier is always same irrespective of input polarity, hence
Whenever We change the supply polarity by mistake the output circuitry will not get effected.
61. What is clipping and clamping design a circuit which does the same?
A)Op –amp circuit.
62. Why do we need to use heat sinks on certain componants.what is the criterion to select a
heat sink?
A) Power dissipation is the main culprit.
63. What are different types of oscillators?
A)Crystal oscillator phase shift, culprit’s Hearty, Wien bridge oscillators.
64. What is thermal run away?
A)The self destruction of unbiased transistor.
65. Can you explain briefly on different types of packages of IC’s?
A)TO 92, TO 99, TO 100, TO 5, DIP, FLAT.
66. What are different types of MOSFET’s?
A)Depletion type and enhancement type.
67. How do you overcome common mode noise?
A)By using CMRR we can overcome it.
68. What are different types of noise?
A) Thermal noise, shortkey noise.
69. What are buffers, what is the importance of using buffers in any circuit?
A) Buffers usually will have high input impedance and low output impedence.Hence it will
Support to connect more loads at the output and it maintains the input voltage.
70. What are different types of ADC?
A)SAR, Flash type.
71. What are different types of DAC?
A)R-2R ladder, Binary weighted Resister type.
72. What are the applications of UJT?
UJT used as relaxation oscillator and also used as voltage detector.
73. Can you give some examples of voltage to current converters?
A)Rectifiers, IC 351.
74. What is offset voltage & why do we need to care about it while selecting an op-amp?
A)It is differential input voltage that exist two inputs of op amp without external input is applied.
75. What is meant by thermocouple?
A)Thermocouple is temperature measuring device.
76. What are different types of power supplies?
A)Un-reggulated, Regulated, Linear, Ripple regulated and Switching.
77. What is PLL?
A)PLL means phased locked loop.
78. Do you any time worked on voltage controlled oscillator?
A)Yes, IC 556.
79. What is most important pin in any microcontroller?
A)Reset pin.
80. What is the difference between serial & parallel communication?
A)In serial communication bits are transfer one by one.
Parallel communication all bits transfer at a time.
81. What is the difference between RS 232 & RS 485?
A)In RS232, standard for serial binary data & it has voltage levels.
In RS485, single pc connected several devices.
82. What care you should take while interfacing any microprocessor to memory?
A)Speed of memory chip, access time.
83. What are different types of memory?
A)Static RAM, Dynamic RAM, Mask RAM..
84. How do you select a SDRAM?
A)SDRAM (static data RAM)it is selected because of its transistor connection.
85. What is EEPRAM?
A)EEPROM means electrically erasable programmable read only memory.
86. Can you explain in brief about the difference between switches and bridges?
A)Switch is used for on & off application.
87. What is JTAG & where it is used?
A)JTAG means joint Text Action Group
It is used in debugging.
88. How do you generate square wave from sine wave?
A)By using Zero crossing detector.
89. Do you know what Monostable & Astable multi vibrator is?
A)Mono stable has one stable state
Astable multi vibrator has ON time & OFF time is equal.
90. How do you convert serial data to parallel data & vice versa?
A)Serial data is converted into parallel data using shift registers and vice versa.
91. What are considerations to be taken while selecting a microcontroller for a specific
application?
A) Crystal Frequency, Memory, Ports, Architecture.
92. What are different kinds of grounding methods available in PCB?
A)Noise ground, Digital ground, Analog ground.
93. How is Schmitt trigger comparator circuit is better than normal comparator circuit?
A)It converts triangular and saw tooth waves in to squire wave.
94. What is the difference between hard ware, Soft ware & Firm ware for particular
application?
A)Hardware (physical components):It is strict about the time
Software (set of programs): It gives degraded output.
Firmware (Hardware and Software): little time is accusable.
95. How to select magnetic shielding for particular components &why do you need
shielding?
A)Magnet shielding is used to avoid the fluctuation that is external disturbances.
96. What is feed forward method & how it is helpful in predictive control circuits?
A)Feed forward method: The part of input is given to output.
It used when there is load variations are takes place.
97. Why we should separate analog & digital ground in PCB?
A)Analog round have some small amount of voltage that’s why we separate digital and analog
Grounds in PCB.
98. How do you design sample EMI filters?
A) EMI Filters means electromagnetic induction filters
99. What are the major causes for radiation emission?
A)Clock harmonics in proper terminations etc.
100. What are the advantages of NAND & NOR gates?
A)To minimize the circuitry by using NOR and NAND Gates.
101. What is the difference between SDRAM & DDRAM?
A)SDRAM means static data RAM. It has capacitors
DDRRAM means dynamic data RAM. It has Flip Flap’s.
102. What is memory banking?
A)In 8051, the memory arranged in four types of banks. It is called memory banking.
103. How to set gain of an amplifier.
A)The ratio of feedback resistance to the input resistance.
104. How do you determine the stability of any system?
A)By using Pole, Zero etc.
105. How to improve/decrease the slew rate of op-amp?
A)The slew rate is decreased with increase in temp
It is increased for high closed loop gains, D.C supply voltage.
106. What is the difference between 8085 & 8086?
A)8085 is 8 bit processor, 8086 is 16 bit processor.
107. What is miller effect?
A) Miller effect =Zf/ (1-A).
108. What is the address for TCON, SCON, SBUF and PCON & PSW?
A)88H, 98H, 99H, 87H, 0D0H.
109. In 8051, which interrupt has highest priority?
A) IE0
110. What are the features of 8096?
A)232 byte Register file, five 8-bit I/O ports, Register to Register architecture.
111. How many synchronous & asynchronous modes are there in serial port of 8096?
A)One synchronous & 3 asynchronous mode.
112. What is the function of watchdog timer?
A) The watchdog timer is an internal timer that resets the system if the soft ware fails to operate
properly.
 MICROCONTROLLER SMALL QUESTIONS

1. Different types of processors studied in the academic year?

A) 8085, 8086 processors.

2. What type of instruction set –Microprocessor and Microcontroller?

A)Microprocessor instruction set is FILO& Micr0controller instruction set is

FIFO.

3) What is CISC?

A) Complex instruction set code.

4) What is RISC?

A)Reduced instruction set computer.

5) Different between RISC and CISC?

CISC RISC

1) Emphasis on hardware 1) Emphasis on software

2) Includes multiclock complex instructions 2) Single clock, Reduced

instructions

3) Load and store incorporated in instructions 3) Load and store

are independent instructions

4) Small code size, High cycles per second 4) Low cycles per
second, logic code sizes

5) Transistors used for storing complex instructions 5) Spends more

transistors on memory registers

6) Memory less 6) Memory more

6) How many address lines require interfacing 8KB of memory?

13 Adders lines.

7) What is program counter?

A) It is used to increment the address of memory location.

8) Buffer:- Used to work as amplifier or driver

9) From which area data executed as fast: Accumulator.

10) Principle of instruction set-FIFO: First In First Out.

11) Definition of instruction cycle: Execution cycle +Fetch Cycle-The

time taken to execute an instruction.

12) What is Microcontroller?

A) It is highly integrated device, Which includes on one chip, All or most of

the parts needed to perform an application control function,

13) What is interrupt latency? How can you reduce it?

A) The time elapsed between the raise of an interrupt and the start of
servicing the interrupt is called interrupt latency,

14) What is a Microprocessor?

A) Microprocessor is a program-controlled device, which fetches the

instructions from memory, decodes and executes the instructions. Most
Micro Processors are single- Chip devices.

15) Give examples for 8/16/32 bit Microprocessors?

A)8-bit processor -8085\Z80/6800; 16-bit Processor-8085/68000/Z8000; 32-

bit Processor-80386/80486.

15. Why 8085 processor is called an 8 bit processor?

A) Because 8085processor has 8 bit ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit). Similarly

8086 processor has 16bit ALU.

16. What is 1st/2nd/3rd/4th processor?

A) The processor made of PMOS/NMOS/HMOS/HCMOS is called 1st/2nd/3rd/4th

generation processors and made up of 4/8/16/32 bits.

17. Define HCMOS?

A) High density N-type Complementary Metal Oxide Silicon Field Effect

Transister.

18. What does microprocessor speed depend on?

A) The processing speed depends on DATA BUS WIDTH.

19. Is address bus uni directional?

A) The address bus is uni directional because the address information is

always given by the microprocessor to address a memory location of I/O
devices.

20. Is the data bus is bi-directional?

A) The data bus is bi-directional because same bus is used for transfer of
data between micro processor and memory or I/O devices in the both
direction.

21. What is a disadvantage of microprocessor?

A) It has limitations on size of data, most microprocessor does not support

floating point operations.

22. What is the difference between microprocessor

&microcontroller?

A) In microprocessor more op-codes, few bit handling instructions.In

microcontroller fewer op-codes, more bit handling instructions and also it is
defined as device that includes microprocessor, memory, input/output
signal lines on a single chip.

23. What is meant by LATCH?

A) Latch is a D-type flip flop used as a temporary storage device.

24.Why does microprocessor contain ROM chips?

A) Microprocessors contain ROM chips because it contains instructions to

execute data.

25. What is difference between primary*secondary storage device?

A)In primary storage device the storage capacity is limited. It has a volatile
memory.

In secondary storage device the storage capacity is large. It is non-volatile

memory.

26. What is difference between static &dynamic RAM?

A)Static RAM: No refreshing,6 to 8 MOS transistors are required to form one
memory cell. Information stored as voltage level in a flip flop.

Dynamic RAM: Refreshed periodically, 3 to 4 transistors are required to form

one memory cell.

27. What is cache memory?

A)Cache memory is a small high speed memory. It is used for temporary

storage if data &the information between main memory &CPU.The cache
memory is only in RAM.

28. What is Interrupt?

A)Interrupt is a signal send by external device to processor so as to request

the processor to form a particular work.

29. What is called Scratch pad of computer?

A) Cache memory is Scratch pad of computer.

30. Which transistor is used in each cell of EPROM?

A) FAMOS (Floating gate Avalanche injection MOS) transistor is used in each

cell of EPROM.

31. What is difference between RAM & ROM?

A)RAM: Random Access Memory, high speed, Volatile memory.

ROM: Read Only Memory, Low speed, on-volatile memory.

32. What is compiler?

A)Compiler is used to translate the high-level language program into

machine code at a time.

33. Which processor structure is pipelined?

A)All *86 processors have pipelined structure.

34. What is flag?

A)Flag is a flip flop used to store the information about the status of a
processor and the status of the instruction executed most recently.

35. What is stack?

A)Stack is a portion of RAM used for saving the content of Program Counter
&General purpose registers.

36. Can ROM be used as Stack?

A)ROM cannot be used as Stack because it is not possible to write to ROM.

37. What is NV-RAM?

A)Non-volatile Read Write Memory, also called Flash memory. It is also now
as Shadow RAM.