Apologies for this vague title, but my question is a little specific.
I have two concerns :
During my digital electronics class, I was told that the design of the processor is first carried on an FPGA board and verified. Only then it is finalized. In order to design the processors on FPGA board, you use Verilog and VHDL, and then let the tools do the heavy lifting. These tools then infer or deduce a schematic / design from our program. Also, simultaneously, another team of engineers is busy programming test benches and carry out verification and simulation etc.
My first question :
If you let the tools do the designing portion of your processor (or microprocessor),
then wont it always infer the same circuit, or at least nearly same circuit
for your processor ?
For example, as one of lab exercises, we were required to program a 4 bit ALU on xilinx ISE in verilog. As long as we had the same instructions / operations/ functionality for our ALU , if we let the tools design ALU, wont it always design the same circuit ? I believe this because ultimately at the transistor level, an AND gate (just an example )will always be composed of, lets say 5 mos transistors (as provided in the library of components ). Also ALU will always contain same blocks / nearly same blocks like adder, subtractor etc ( In other words, same design will be inferred).
My second question :
If I am correct above ( which obviously I doubt ), then how would the designs differ ?
In other words, where lies the role of a human / engineer if everything is
done by the tools .
As another example, Intel produces processors. If we for the time being assume that they produce on 28 nm, and will continue to do so for another 5 years ( just an example) . Then how is it that they come up with fast processors every year or so ? I am confused because at the end of the day, Intel itself will obviously be using these kind of tools (verilog / vhdl) to design their chips. So as long as they have a functionality which does not change, they should always come up with same design.
Please understand that this is not a broad question. It focus on the automation aspects / designing using tools only. Also I am not concerned with advances in computer science concepts, such as introduction of pipelines etc which improved performance. I am only interested in above mention aspects.
I am asking this because I am little interested in designing a small microprocessor before my graduation. But programming a couple of lines in Verilog / vhdl and letting the tools do the job does not seem to excite me at all.
Thank you.