How are CPUs designed?

Question

I've started playing with electronics a while ago and making simple logic gates using transistors. I know modern integrated circuits use CMOS instead of transistor-transistor logic. The thing I can't help wondering about is how CPUs are designed.

Is design still done at a (sub)logic gate level, or is there not much innovation in that area anymore and have we moved on to a higher level of abstraction? I understand how an ALU is built, but there is a lot more to CPUs than that.

Where do the designs for the billions of transistors come from? Are they mostly auto generated by software or is there still a lot of manual optimization?

Answer 1

It is very likely CPU's and SoC's are used by hardware description languages like Verilog and VHDL (two major players).

These languages allow different levels of abstractions. In VHDL, you can define logic blocks as entities; it contains inputs and output ports. Within the block you can define the logic required. Say you define a block with input A, input B and output C. You could easily write C = A and B;, and basically you created a AND port block. This is possibly the simplest block you can imagine.

Digital systems are typically designed with a strong hierarchy. One may start 'top-level' with major functions a CPU requires: proccesor (multiple?) memory, PCI-express, and other busses. Within this level busses and communication signals between memory and procesor may already be defined.

When you step one level down, it will define the innerworkings of making something 'work'. Taken an example of a microcontroller, it may contain an UART interface. The actual logic required to make a functional UART is defined one level below.. In here, much other logic may be required to generate and divide the required clock, buffer data (FIFO buffers), report data to the CPU (some kind of bus system).

The interesting thing of VHDL and digital design is the reuse of blocks. You could for example, just copy&paste the UART block in your top-level to create 2 UARTs (well, maybe not that easy, only if the UART block is capable of somekind of addressing!).

This design isn't any kind of gate-level design. The VHDL can be also be 'compiled' in a way that it is finally translated to logic gates. A machine can optimize this far better than a human could (and quicker too). For example; the internals of block A requires an inverter before outputting the signal. Block B takes this output signal and inverts it once again. Well, 2 inverters in series don't do much right? Correct, so you can just as well leave them out. However, in the 'top-level' design you won't be able to spot the two inverters in series.. you just see two ports connected. A compiler can optimize this far quicker than a human.

Basically what digital system design contains is the description how the logic should 'behave', and the computer is used to figure out what the most efficient way is to lay out the individual logic gates.

Answer 2

Let me simplify and expand my previous comments and connect the dots for those who seem to need it.

Is design still done at a (sub)logic gate level?

• YES

Design is done at many levels, the sub-logic level is always different. Each fabrication shrink demands the most brilliant physics, chemistry,and lithographic process experience as the structure of a transistor changes and geometry also changes to compensate for trade-offs, as it shrinks down to atomic levels and cost ~$billions each binary step down in size. To achieve 14nm geometry is a massive undertaking in R&D, process control & management and that is still an understatement!

For example the job skills required to do this include; - "FET, cell, and block-level custom layouts, FUB-level floor plans, abstract view generation, RC extraction, and schematic-to-layout verification and debug using phases of physical design development including parasitic extraction, static timing, wire load models, clock generation, custom polygon editing, auto-place and route algorithms, floor planning, full-chip assembly, packaging, and verification."*

- is there not much innovation in that area anymore? - WRONG - There is significant and heavily funded innovation in Semiconductor Physics, judging by Moore's Law and the number of patents, it will never stop.The savings in power, heat and thus quadrupling in capability pays off each time.

- have we moved on to a higher level of abstraction? - It never stopped moving. - With demand for more cores, doing more in one instruction like ARM RISC CPU's , more powerful embedded µC's or MCU's, smart RAM with DDR4 which has ECC by default and sectors like flash with priority bits for urgent memory fetches. - The CPU evolution and architectural changes will never stop.

Let me give you a hint. Go do a job search at Intel, AMD, TI or AD for Engineers and see the job descriptions.

- Where do the designs for the billions of transistors come from? - It came from adding more 64bit blocks of hardware. but now going nanotube failures, thinking has to change from the top down approach of blocks to the bottom up approach of nanotubes to make it work.

• Are they mostly auto generated by software? with tongue firmly planted in cheek...

• Actually they are still extracting designs from Area51 from spaceships and have a way to go.... until we are fully nano-nano tube compliant. An engineer goes into the library and says nVidia we would like you to join us over here on this chip and becomes a part, which goes into a macro-blocks. The layout can be replicated like Ants in Toystory but explicit control over all connections must be manually routed /checked out as well as use DRC and auto-routing for comparison. Yes Automation Tools are constantly being upgraded to remove duplication and time wasted.

  - is there still a lot of manual optimization?

• Considering one airline saved enough money to pay for your salary by removing just 1 olive from the dinner in First Class, Intel will be looking at ways to remove as many atoms as possible within the time-frame. Any excess capacitance means wasted heat, performance and oops also more noise, not so fast...

But really CPU's grow like Tokyo, its not overnight, but tens of millions live there now with steady improvement. I didn't learn how to design at Univ. but by reading and trying to understand how things work, I was able to get up to speed in industry pretty fast. I got 10 years experience in my 1st 5 yrs in Aerospace, Nuclear Instrument design, SCADA design, Process monitoring, Antenna design, Automated Weather station design and debug,OCXO's PLL's VLF Rx's, 2 way remote control of Black Brandt Rockets... and that was just my 1st job. I had no idea what I could do.

Don't worry about billions of transistors or be afraid of what to learn or how much you need to know. Just follow your passion and read trade journals in between your sleep, then you won't look so green on the job and it doesn't feel like work anymore.

I remember having to design a 741 "like" Op Amp as part of an exam one time, in 20 minutes. I have never really used it, but I can recognize good from the great designs. But then it only had 20 transistors.

But how to design a CPU must start with a Spec., namely; Why design a CPU and make measurable benchmarks to achieve such as; - Macro instructions per second (MIPS) (more important than CPU clock),for example; - Intel's Itanium chip is based on what they call an Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (EPIC) design. - Transmeta patented CPU design with very long instruction word code morphing microprocessors (VLIWCMM). They sued Intel in 2006, closed shop and settled for ~$200million in 2007. - Performance per watt (PPW) , when power costs > cost of chip (for servers) - FLoating point Ops Per Second (FLOPS) for math performance.

There are many more metrics, but never base a CPU's design quality on its GHz speed (see myth)

So what tools de jour are needed to design CPU's? The list would not fit on this page from atomic level physics design to dynamic mesh EMC physical EM/RF design to Front End Design Verification Test Engineer, where skills required include; - Front-end RTL Simulation - knowledge of IA and computer architecture and system level design - Logic verification and logic simulation using either VHDL or Verilog. - Object-oriented programming and various CPU, bus/interconnect, coherency protocols.

Answer 3

AMD's Overview of CPU design

Intel's version

Neither of these provide much detail, but interesting none the less. Don't accept this as an answer. Others have considered your question in detail and have provided more effort in attempting to answer in detail.