[dfox]

"Name and describe the four states in MESI cache coherence" is mostly about having at least basic idea of how multiprocessor systems work that is pretty crucial to any seriously meant multi-threaded programming. It's something that anyone who wants to call himself a programmer has to know (or at least have some idea that something like that is happening, which is almost equivalent to knowing how it works, because it's really straightforward).

[jsnell]

I don't think the question as phrased is about having a basic idea of how multiprocessor systems work. It's a question about naming(!) of the component parts of a specific protocol. That's trivia. It's as if the question about the TLB was about the acronym rather than the function.

(So what's a good question to see if somebody understands cache coherency? Maybe describing a problem caused by cache-line contention, and asking for an explanation and fix to it?)