how the fuck can a company make a cpu with billions of circuits?

Well the great thing about architecture is that there are a lot of patterns. You can design a small component with specific functionality and then copy paste it where necessary (so to speak). Now days we can use Machine Learning to help plan circuits and such like VLSI layout.

>>59667694
so for example, is an ALU just a copy paste of the basic circuit needed for an adder? if i just opened up VLSI and pasted an adder a billion times could i make my own x86 chip?

>>59667668
computers have been making the computers for decades, robots are taking peoples jobs, elon musk is creating skynet right now.

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>>59667668
This is why we use computers to design the computers.

#LearnSomethingEveryDay

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>>59667706

Well it all kind of builds up. So you start by designing some configuration of transistors that gives you logic gates. Then you use these handy logic gates you can now copy paste to configure some other component like a Full Adder. This continues up the food chain. So my point is really that we have these nice abstractions that we can use to plan some chip at a high enough level (perhaps with computer help) that doesn't require us to be sitting down and individually planning out every connection/configuration.

See the image; It's not a bunch of individual circuits at a planning level but really "ok we know how to build a cache so lets put that here" and so forth.

>>59667668
Nobody designes cpus anymore, they take existing design and modify it

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>>59667765
I had to put this picture up for the autism points.

>>59667776
so you're telling me that every single cpu that exists is based off of the same schematics?

>>59667834
All Intel CPU's are iterations on the Pentium 3 design.

>>59667974
Not particularly, P6 died with the Core Duo, but saying they're more incremental improvements on Sandy Bridge or maybe even Nehalem isn't really out there.