If there are billions of transistors in a CPU, there is no chance that somebody designed every single one of them manually. Is their layout calculated or something?

Question

If there are billions of transistors in a CPU, there is no chance that somebody designed every single one of them manually. Is their layout calculated or something?

In: 1270

Answer 1

The term is VLSI, or ‘very large scale integration’ which basically allows engineers to plug and play functionality onto a chip instead of laying each transistor out manually. The VLSI process is now completely computerized, but the idea is essentially the same.

[https://www.tutorialspoint.com/vlsi_design/vlsi_design_digital_system.htm](https://www.tutorialspoint.com/vlsi_design/vlsi_design_digital_system.htm)