Recently I studied the very fundamentals of how computers work at the level of 1s and 0s, wires, and logic gates from a book written for laypersons. I followed the book along and built a very, very primitive computer with a cpu and ram in a simulator by plotting different kinds of logic gates and connecting them with wires.
After this exercise I’m left wondering how are new chips designed nowadays considering that there are billions and billions of microscopic transistors in a modern chip? I’m assuming there are some levels of abstraction to simplify the process? I can’t imagine all those billions of transistors and wires being plotted manually one by one by people. Is there like a programming language of some sort where a compiler converts syntax into circuitry layouts?
Also, I don’t mean the physical manufacturing process. I think I have a good grasp of that. I’m purely talking about the design stage.
And the first ones would have been done using more primitive computers, and those by hand. There’s indeed a whole bootstrapping problem here where you need the tech to make the tech. You see this with other tech like compliers where new versions of compilers are compiled using the old versions of the same compilers.