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2988 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 areas2988 Architecture Fundamentals91 Distributed Systems111 Data Architecture100 Cloud Architecture97 Networking96 API & Integration Architecture97 Reliability & Resilience99 Observability92 Performance & Capacity Engineering100 Security Architecture105 Cost Architecture & FinOps102 Business Architecture103 Architecture Communication102 Enterprise Architecture100 Legacy Modernization102 AI-Era Architecture106 Software Architecture & Engineering93 Architecture Patterns94 Architecture Decision-Making101 The Architect's Meta-Skills102 Delivery & Release Engineering103 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience102 Testing & Quality Architecture102 Data Platform Architecture98 Streaming & Real-Time Data103 Data Governance & Semantics91 Frontend & Experience Architecture101 Edge, Mobile & IoT98 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture99 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk98
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

5 questions in Compute Optimisation.

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. Compute Optimisation advanced

    Google's ASPLOS 2021 paper on its video coding unit reports 20x to 33x better efficiency than its prior well-tuned software transcoding system, for workloads including YouTube. Your platform spends about $14M a year on transcode compute and someone proposes a custom accelerator programme. Estimate the annual spend at which it pays back and say which assumption dominates the error.

    3 min answer youtubecustom-siliconacceleratorsestimation
  5. Compute Optimisation advanced

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

    2 min answer computespotarchitecturecost