Portfolio ↗

Quiz

2741 questions of the kind that actually get asked — in interviews, in architecture review boards, and by the person who has to run the thing at 3 AM. Every answer states the trade-off rather than the slogan, and says when the obvious choice is the wrong one.

All areas2741 Architecture Fundamentals81 Distributed Systems101 Data Architecture90 Cloud Architecture87 Networking86 API & Integration Architecture78 Reliability & Resilience99 Observability92 Performance & Capacity Engineering90 Security Architecture95 Cost Architecture & FinOps92 Business Architecture93 Architecture Communication91 Enterprise Architecture91 Legacy Modernization92 AI-Era Architecture96 Software Architecture & Engineering84 Architecture Patterns84 Architecture Decision-Making91 The Architect's Meta-Skills92 Delivery & Release Engineering93 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience92 Testing & Quality Architecture102 Data Platform Architecture98 Streaming & Real-Time Data93 Data Governance & Semantics91 Frontend & Experience Architecture91 Edge, Mobile & IoT88 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture90 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk98
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

2741 questions.

  1. Compute Models advanced

    A GPU platform has a few very large jobs competing with thousands of small ones. How should scheduling fairness, fragmentation, bin packing, preemption, queueing and starvation shape the architecture?

    2 min answer runpodgpuschedulingfragmentation
  2. Compute Models advanced

    A compute platform schedules GPU jobs with execution times ranging from minutes to weeks, where large jobs need many co-located accelerators. What happens if the scheduler uses simple first-come-first-served with best-fit packing?

    2 min answer schedulinggpufragmentationgang-scheduling
  3. Compute Models advanced

    A device-testing platform receives a burst of tens of thousands of test sessions after a major framework release. How should queues, worker pools, concurrency limits, resource classes, scheduling fairness and backpressure prevent capacity exhaustion?

    2 min answer browserstackschedulingfairnessqueueing
  4. Compute Models intermediate

    A fleet of 200 instances averages 15% CPU and 85% memory. Finance wants a 40% cost reduction. What do you do?

    2 min answer rightsizinginstance-familycost
  5. Compute Models intermediate

    A workload runs continuously at moderate load. Finance asks why the serverless bill is four times the previous instance cost. Explain the crossover and how you would calculate it.

    2 min answer serverlesscostcomputeduty-cycle
  6. Compute Optimisation advanced

    A platform's accelerator fleet reports high utilisation, yet throughput per accelerator is far below the hardware's capability. Where does the waste usually hide?

    2 min answer compute-optimisationutilisationbatchingdata-pipeline
  7. Compute Optimisation advanced

    A team migrates its stateless serving fleet to an ARM instance family for roughly 20% better price-performance on paper. What has it given up, and when does that bill arrive?

    2 min answer arminstance-familybuild-matrixcommitments
  8. Compute Optimisation intermediate Multiple choice

    At 09:10 a checkout service starts returning 503s. Its autoscaler has taken the fleet from 30 to 180 pods in twenty minutes, CPU per pod sits at 22%, and the database reports connection waits. That day's compute bill is four times normal and traffic is up only 30%. Which explanation fits every symptom?

    3 min answer autoscalingconnection poolingfeedback loopcost spike
  9. Compute Optimisation advanced

    Which compute cost lever has the largest payoff, and why is it the one teams attempt last?

    2 min answer computespotarchitecturecost
  10. Concurrency advanced Multiple choice

    A platform must handle millions of concurrent connections per process cluster where most connections are idle most of the time. Which concurrency model fits, and what does the wrong choice cost?

    2 min answer concurrencyevent-loopthreadsconnections
  11. Concurrency beginner Multiple choice

    A service handles 100 requests per second with a pool of 10 worker threads. The team raises the pool to 100 threads. Throughput stays at roughly 100 rps and p99 latency gets much worse. What is the primary reason?

    2 min answer concurrencylittles lawbottleneckthread pools
  12. Concurrency advanced Multiple choice

    A service holds a concurrency limit of 60 with a 50 ms mean service time and serves clients that give up after 2 seconds. Offered load triples. Where should the excess requests wait?

    3 min answer concurrencybounded-queuedeadlinesgoodput