core practice · system design prompt
Design exercise: Compute, Memory & Storage Hierarchy
CPU caches, NUMA, DRAM, GPU memory, NVMe, object storage, and the movement costs between them. Implement designOutline() returning non-empty values for: workingSet, dataMovement, bottleneck. Each value must name a concrete mechanism or decision.
The mechanism
Performance is usually data movement. Each level trades capacity and durability for latency and bandwidth, so placement decisions must follow the working set and access pattern.
Expected evidence
A design outline with workingSet, dataMovement, bottleneck plus an explicit failure mode or trade-off.
Try this drill in the practice workspace →
Hints when you need them
- Name the failure mode before selecting the mechanism.