Hardware interview practice
Build parameterized pack and unpack helpers
Create reusable helpers that pack N words of W bits into one vector and unpack that vector with word 0 in the least-significant lane.
Reviewed example
Work through one case
Input
N=3, W=4, words[0:2] = [4'hA, 4'h3, 4'hF]Expected output
packed = 12'hF3A; unpack(packed) = [A, 3, F]Word zero occupies the least-significant nibble, so the same indexed part-select convention makes pack and unpack exact inverses.
What to cover
Requirements
- Support compile-time N and W parameters.
- Use one explicit indexed part-select mapping in both directions.
- Initialize the packed result before assigning slices.