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Scale Digit-Square Convergence Requests

Last updated: May 29, 2026

Quick Overview

This question evaluates a candidate's competency in designing scalable, low-latency distributed services that combine algorithmic optimization and caching to handle massive request volumes for a numerical convergence operation.

  • medium
  • Apple
  • System Design
  • Software Engineer

Scale Digit-Square Convergence Requests

Company: Apple

Role: Software Engineer

Category: System Design

Difficulty: medium

Interview Round: Technical Screen

Design a service that receives very high request volume for the digit-square convergence operation. For each request, the input is a positive integer n. The service repeatedly replaces n with the sum of the squares of its decimal digits and returns whether the sequence eventually reaches 1. Requirements: - Handle billions of requests over time. - Keep request latency low. - Avoid expensive repeated computation for common states. - Use the observation that after a small number of transformations, fixed-width integers collapse into a small numeric range, such as values below 1,000 or another small bound chosen by the implementation.

Quick Answer: This question evaluates a candidate's competency in designing scalable, low-latency distributed services that combine algorithmic optimization and caching to handle massive request volumes for a numerical convergence operation.

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|Home/System Design/Apple

Scale Digit-Square Convergence Requests

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Apple
Oct 28, 2025, 12:00 AM
mediumSoftware EngineerTechnical ScreenSystem Design
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Design a service that receives very high request volume for the digit-square convergence operation.

For each request, the input is a positive integer n. The service repeatedly replaces n with the sum of the squares of its decimal digits and returns whether the sequence eventually reaches 1.

Requirements:

  • Handle billions of requests over time.
  • Keep request latency low.
  • Avoid expensive repeated computation for common states.
  • Use the observation that after a small number of transformations, fixed-width integers collapse into a small numeric range, such as values below 1,000 or another small bound chosen by the implementation.

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