Module 03 · Processes and threads · Drill

Processes and threads drill

Scenario prompts that check whether processes and threads is usable under pressure. Answer out loud, then compare.

4 prompts20 minNew

0 of 4 graded

Prompt 1
You are designing a document-conversion service that accepts user-uploaded files (PDF, DOCX, images) and converts them with third-party native libraries known to crash on malformed input. Decide what runs in threads and what runs in separate processes, and explain how a crash is contained and recovered.
Say your answer out loud first. Thirty seconds is enough.
Prompt 2
A Java API server handles each request on its own platform thread from a pool of 2,000. At peak, CPU is at 90 percent, throughput has stopped rising, and p99 latency has tripled. Requests spend about 80 percent of their time waiting on downstream HTTP calls. Explain what the machine is doing and how you would fix it.
Say your answer out loud first. Thirty seconds is enough.
Prompt 3
During rolling deploys on Kubernetes, about 0.5 percent of requests fail with connection resets, and some pods take exactly 30 seconds to terminate. The container's entrypoint is a shell script that sets environment variables and then starts the app. Diagnose and fix.
Say your answer out loud first. Thirty seconds is enough.
Prompt 4
An application and a local sidecar proxy on the same host exchange about 50,000 small requests per second over loopback TCP, and the sidecar consumes 30 percent of a core. Separately, a video pipeline moves 4K frames between two processes. Choose IPC mechanisms for each and justify them with costs.
Say your answer out loud first. Thirty seconds is enough.