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Coding Interview Tool for HDL

Musings on the dearth of hardware industry specific coding interview tool.

Mar 30, 2025
·2 minutes reading
Cover Image for Coding Interview Tool for HDL

Have you ever wondered why there are no commercial, coding assessment tools that can be used to test hardware industry specific programming languages?

The lack of online, coding assessment tools for hardware-specific programming languages like Verilog, VHDL, and SystemC stems from several challenges:

• Simulation Complexity: Hardware description languages (HDLs) require specialized simulation environments that standard coding platforms don't support. Unlike Python or Java, where output is immediate, HDL-based testing needs hardware emulation or logic simulation tools.

• Limited Market Demand: While software development is widespread, hardware programming is a niche field. Most companies hiring for FPGA, ASIC, or EDA roles already use proprietary tools like Vivado (Xilinx), ModelSim (Mentor), or Quartus (Intel) for testing, reducing the demand for general-purpose assessment tools.

• Toolchain Dependence: Verilog, VHDL, and SystemC often rely on vendor-specific compilers and toolchains, which are difficult to integrate into standard coding platforms.

• Hands-On Testing Needs: Hardware engineers are often tested on real-world debugging and circuit design, which can't be easily replicated in a text-based coding environment.

• Lack of Standardized Problems: Unlike coding problems in LeetCode or HackerRank, which follow standard algorithms and data structures, HDL problems vary widely based on design specifications, making it harder to create a unified problem bank.

There are infact some free, online coding platforms that support Verilog, VHDL, and SystemC but are missing code collaboration feature. In the absence of suitable solutions these could be used as a coding interview tool:

1. EDA Playground – Supports Verilog, VHDL, and SystemVerilog with built-in simulators like Icarus Verilog and ModelSim.

2. Verilog Online Compiler (Tutorialspoint) – Simple Verilog code execution environment.

If you happen to be in the hardware industry and are fruitlessly searching for a coding interview platform to test candidates' HDL programming skills then you have come to the right page. HireNorm's CodePane is the solution you have been looking for. It is the only coding interview platform that supports SystemC, Tcl, Verilog and VHDL among others.

Before you get started, quickly refer to the code samples in documentation and note down the HDL-specific keywords that you must use to get your HDL codes to work within HireNorm's CodePane.