Distributed LLM training
Design the training infrastructure for a large language model trained across 1024 GPUs for several weeks on a multi-petabyte tokenized corpus. Hardware failures are routine at this scale (expect a GPU/node to die every few hours). Design the system to make a multi-week run survivable: cover the data pipeline feeding 1024 workers without becoming the bottleneck, the parallelism strategy, and how checkpointing + recovery keeps a single node failure from wasting the whole run.
What a strong answer looks like
Clarify scale and constraints first. Propose a clean component breakdown, then go deep on the hard parts (data model, bottlenecks, consistency, failure modes) and name the trade-offs you are making.
Clarify5:30 left
Estimate5:30 planned
Design16:30 planned
Deep dive13:30 planned
Failure9:00 planned
Which questions mattered is sealed until you submit. Telling you now would just be handing over the edge cases.
Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.