1,000+ ASIC Interview Questions: SystemVerilog, UVM & RTL

DescriptionQ719

Q719FWASIC interview problem

Parse a bounded Roman board revision

TechniquesFWParserBoundsError handlingFixed memory

DifficultyEasy

TopicFirmware Algorithms

LanguageSystemVerilog

Requirements4 checkpoints

Problem

Parse an explicitly sized electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) field as a canonical Roman numeral from I through MMMCMXCIX without allocation or out-of-range reads.

Type declarationSystemVerilog

typedef enum { ROMAN_OK, ROMAN_EINVAL, ROMAN_ERANGE } roman_rc_t;
roman_rc_t roman_to_u16(const uint8_t *buf,
                        size_t len,
                        uint16_t *value);
// len is 1..15; a successful value is 1..3999.

Example input and output

Use this case to check your interpretation

Input

bytes="MCMXCIV", length=7

Output

success; revision=1994

Explanation

The subtractive pairs CM, XC, and IV are legal, and re-encoding 1994 reproduces the exact input, proving canonical spelling.

Requirements (4)

Accept only uppercase I, V, X, L, C, D, and M and the six standard subtractive pairs.
Return invalid-input errors before range errors, except that a fully parsed value above 3999 returns the range error.
Reject noncanonical spellings by re-encoding the parsed value and comparing every input byte.
Do not call strlen or modify the caller's output until the complete parse succeeds.