Professional CPU Design

[Moikel]

Hi, I was just wondering if professional CPU designers (like the guys
at AMD and Intel) would typical mostly work on the logic gate level or
on the lower CMOS transistor/ circuit level when designing CPU's?
Also, what kind of role do HDLs play in CPU design, it it moslty for
logic verification or is it also synthesised for actual use in the
final circuit?

Bear in mind I'm speaking of professional CPU design, not hobbyist
etc...

Thanks

 

[PeteS]

Hi, I was just wondering if professional CPU designers (like the guys
at AMD and Intel) would typical mostly work on the logic gate level or
on the lower CMOS transistor/ circuit level when designing CPU's?
Also, what kind of role do HDLs play in CPU design, it it moslty for
logic verification or is it also synthesised for actual use in the
final circuit?

Bear in mind I'm speaking of professional CPU design, not hobbyist
etc...

Thanks

You can see how it's done at the OpenSparc project.

http://www.sun.com/processors/opensparc/

The entire HDL source is GPL'd

Cheers

PeteS

 

[Iwo Mergler]

Hi, I was just wondering if professional CPU designers (like the guys
at AMD and Intel) would typical mostly work on the logic gate level or
on the lower CMOS transistor/ circuit level when designing CPU's?
Also, what kind of role do HDLs play in CPU design, it it moslty for
logic verification or is it also synthesised for actual use in the
final circuit?

Bear in mind I'm speaking of professional CPU design, not hobbyist
etc...

Thanks

It's all done in HDL (VHDL/VERILOG), but with manual intervention at
the place & route stage to optimize the critical paths. You can skip
the manual optimization, but your max. clock drops by about 40% or so.

Some places use SystemC for design verification.

Kind regards,

Iwo