Hello /prog/,
Could you please explain in ways a software engineer would understand what exactly do hardware engineers do? I've heard of languages such as VHDL and Verilog, are they actually used or do they draw circuits manually? Do they test hardware through emulation or do they use FPGA? Is a VLSI chip just a big ASIC?
Name:
Anonymous2012-09-25 6:34
Circuitry design is still a software engineering. Hardware engineers work with physical materials.
I have dreams where hardware engineers get together and try to make their architectures as hodge-podged and overgrown as possible. When they get bored of that they go and torture the language in their specs and hide outright falsehoods in the most important parts of the reference manual.
They may or may not actually do any of that; I really have no idea. The results seem to be about the same either way.
>>4
Only x86 is that awful. It was a 16-bit CPU designed to be source-compatible with 8-bit CPUs, extended several times. All other CPU architectures are better than x86 (except the prototype instruction set Notch designed).
Name:
Anonymous2012-09-26 0:01
>>1
yes, multi-billion transistor chips are designed 100% by hand
Name:
Anonymous2012-09-26 0:01
>>5
I was talking about graphics controllers. Actually, pretty much any complex controller that isn't a de facto industry standard is pretty much guaranteed to have some weird sh*t going on. CPUs are much better documented because there's a much wider range of programmers that need to be able to deal with them...
Name:
Anonymous2012-09-26 0:46
>>6
lol that guy must have a really steady hand then ;)