Part 1 answers: How does an idea become a working chip?

A chip starts as an idea and passes through architecture, RTL design, verification, synthesis, physical design and manufacturing before it runs a program. Each stage hands a precise artifact to the next, and a mistake found late is harder to fix than one found early.

This part walks the whole flow once, names who does what on each side of the front-end/back-end split, and introduces PPA, the performance, power and area trade-off behind many design decisions.

After this part you can

• Sketch the full flow from idea to silicon and name what each stage delivers to the next.

• Explain what RTL is and where it sits between architecture and gates.

• Define performance, power and area, and name the trade-off between them.

Lessons

Every lesson in this part is ready. Work through them in order: each one sets up the problem the next one solves.

Related topics

• Course hub

• Next: Part 2 · Your Workstation