ELI5, if it takes nearly thirty years to count to a billion, one second at a time, how are humans able design complex CPUs and Graphics cards containing multiple billions of transistors?

Question

ELI5, if it takes nearly thirty years to count to a billion, one second at a time, how are humans able design complex CPUs and Graphics cards containing multiple billions of transistors?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

Our current silicon design are generally speaking an evolution of the designs that started in the 70s. When Intel or AMD release a new line of processors, it’s not 100% new design from scratch… Think of it like a car, if Ford had to start from scratch, designing the combustion engine, the drive train, the steering etc they’d never managed to release 50 new cars a year, but they don’t. The reuse existing designs with minor improvements.

In addition, people aren’t designing these chips with pen and paper, there is very advanced software tools for developing silicon chips and modelling their behaviour, their thermal profile etc.