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?

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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?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Yes. If you’d like some insight into this, I highly, highly, highly recommend [Ben Eater’s series on breadboard computers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyznrdDSSGM&list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2565dvjafglHU).

In short, CPU architecture is highly modular. Rather than positioning each and every transistor individually, designers will build up one tiny module, then duplicate that module every time they need that specific functionality. Then they’ll take assemblies of those modules that perform a specific task and duplicate them everyhere they need that task performed. Repeat the chain several times, and they are placing millions of transistors every time they click their mouse.

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