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

Overview

Qualcomm is seeking an experienced CPU/SoC Validation Engineer with strong knowledge of ARM Generic Interrupt Controller (GIC) architecture to own post-silicon validation of interrupt-controller functionality across CPU, firmware, power-management and OS interactions.

What you'll do

• 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 registers, Interrupt Translation Service (ITS), and SGI, PPI, SPI and LPI interrupt flows.
• Validate interrupt routing, prioritization, masking, preemption, affinity, acknowledgement and EOI behavior.
• Develop stress scenarios covering concurrent interrupt generation, high interrupt rates, multi-core interrupt routing, SGI broadcast and targeted SGIs, interrupt migration and CPU hotplug, and interrupt 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.

What you'll need

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Engineering, or related field and 3+ years of Hardware Engineering or related work experience, OR Master's degree in the same fields and 2+ years of Hardware Engineering or related work experience, OR PhD in the same fields and 1+ year of Hardware Engineering or related work experience.
• Strong understanding of ARMv8/ARMv9 architecture.
• Strong understanding of ARM GICv3/GICv4 architecture.
• Good knowledge of SGI / PPI / SPI / LPI.
• Good knowledge of interrupt affinity and routing.
• Good knowledge of priority masking and preemption.
• Good knowledge of Group 0 / Group 1 interrupts.
• Good knowledge of Secure and Non-secure interrupt handling.
• Good knowledge of GIC Distributor and Redistributor.
• Good knowledge of CPU interface registers.
• Good knowledge of ITS and MSI-based interrupts.
• Good knowledge of virtual 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.

Nice to have

• Experience with JTAG/debuggers and SoC debug methodologies.
• 7 to 16 years of experience in 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.

Details

• Location: Bangalore, India.
• Employer: Qualcomm India Private Limited, Engineering Group, Hardware Engineering.