> We all look up super simple stuff we learned in year one of engineering school. I'm not sure I would call reading a little "training". I just think interviewing should be a little more forgiving. Interviewers like to gate keep a little with little gotchas in an environment that is completely different than day to day work.
I don't disagree with any of this, I just think there's a certain "base" of knowledge for certain jobs that needs to be so well understood that it's automatic. For an embedded engineers I think "cache line" is part of that base in much the same way I would consider it a hard requirement for any incoming frontend web-developer to know what the DOM is.
Somewhat disagree, depending on the embedded subset. Lots of MCUs don't have any cache, so they don't have any cache lines. If you're programming some sort of embedded Linux system you'll have a more powerful processor and almost certainly have cache.
So if you're hiring for MCU work (bare metal or RTOS) the concept of a cache line isn't important. If you're hiring for application processor work (often Linux), it's very important.
I don't disagree with any of this, I just think there's a certain "base" of knowledge for certain jobs that needs to be so well understood that it's automatic. For an embedded engineers I think "cache line" is part of that base in much the same way I would consider it a hard requirement for any incoming frontend web-developer to know what the DOM is.