Staff/Senior Staff Engineer – ARM GIC & CPU Post-Silicon Validation

Qualcomm•Published 4 days ago•First seen 3 days ago

Company:

Qualcomm India Private Limited

Job Area:

Engineering Group, Engineering Group > Hardware Engineering

General Summary:

Role Overview:

We are looking for an experienced CPU/SoC Validation Engineer with strong knowledge of ARM Generic Interrupt Controller (GIC) architecture and hands-on experience in post-silicon validation, system-level debugging. The engineer will own validation of interrupt-controller functionality across CPU, firmware, power-management, and OS interactions.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Engineering, or related field and 2+ years of Hardware Engineering or related work experience.
OR
Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Engineering, or related field and 1+ year of Hardware Engineering or related work experience.
OR
PhD in Computer Science, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Engineering, or related field.

Key Responsibilities

  • Develop and execute post-silicon validation plans for ARM GICv3/GICv4 and CPU interrupt subsystems.
  • Validate GIC components including: Distributor (GICD)Redistributor (GICR)CPU interface and system registersInterrupt Translation Service (ITS)SGI, PPI, SPI and LPI interrupt flows
  • Validate interrupt routing, prioritization, masking, preemption, affinity, acknowledgement and EOI behavior.
  • Develop stress scenarios covering: Concurrent interrupt generationHigh interrupt ratesMulti-core interrupt routingSGI broadcast and targeted SGIsInterrupt migration and CPU hotplugInterrupt handling during CPU idle and low-power transitions
  • Validate GIC behavior across CPU power collapse, suspend/resume, reset and DVFS transitions.
  • Debug complex issues involving lost interrupts, unexpected routing, interrupt latency, stuck interrupts and incorrect GIC state.
  • Analyze key GIC registers such as GICD, GICR, ICC system registers, ICH virtualization registers and ITS state.
  • Validate interactions between the GIC and OS/kernel, firmware, hypervisor and power-management software.
  • Work closely with CPU architecture, firmware, kernel, power-management, design and verification teams to root-cause silicon issues.
  • Use hardware/software debugging techniques including register dumps, trace, kernel logs, crash dumps and waveform/trace correlation.
  • Develop automation and stress workloads for interrupt validation and regression testing.
  • Track validation coverage, defects, risks and closure status through engineering tracking systems.

Required Technical Skills

  • Strong understanding of ARMv8/ARMv9 architecture.
  • Strong understanding of ARM GICv3/GICv4 architecture.
  • Good knowledge of: SGI / PPI / SPI / LPIInterrupt affinity and routingPriority masking and preemptionGroup 0 / Group 1 interruptsSecure and Non-secure interrupt handlingGIC Distributor and RedistributorCPU interface registersITS and MSI-based interruptsVirtual interrupts / vGIC concepts
  • Understanding of CPU power states, clock/power collapse, reset sequences and low-power entry/exit.
  • Programming/scripting experience with C/C++, Python and shell scripting.
  • Experience with JTAG/debuggers and SoC debug methodologies is desirable.

Preferred Experience

  • 7 to 16 years of relevant experience - A Must
  • CPU/SoC post-silicon validation or silicon bring-up experience.
  • Validation of ARM-based multicore SoCs.
  • Knowledge of virtualization, hypervisors and virtual interrupt handling.
  • Experience debugging interactions among GIC, CPU low-power states, DVFS and firmware.
  • Ability to convert architectural requirements into validation scenarios, stress tests and measurable coverage.

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