Assembly Language and Code Generation Questions

Knowledge and practical skill reading and writing assembly language for relevant instruction set architectures such as ARM Thumb, RISC V, or x86. Core topics include calling conventions and application binary interface details, stack frame layout and management, register usage and allocation, function prologue and epilogue, position independent code and linking, object file and symbol concepts, inline assembly and writing callable assembly routines, and how high level language constructs map to generated code. Candidates should understand compiler backends and optimization passes, how optimization levels change generated code, how inlining, loop transformation, and instruction selection affect performance, and techniques for optimizing critical sections with hand written assembly when appropriate. Familiarity with toolchain behaviors such as assembler and linker flags, compiler diagnostics about generated code, and basic conventions for calling into and out of assembly from higher level languages is expected.