Practice question · Put in order
Order the stages by which a hardware description becomes a physical chip.
- Simulate the description to check that its behaviour is what was intended
- Place the cells on the chip and route the wires between them
- Manufacture the resulting layout
- Write a behavioural description of what the hardware should do
- Synthesise the description into gates and cells for the chosen technology
Hints
- Errors are cheapest to fix at the earliest stage that can reveal them, so checking behaviour comes before committing to gates.
- There is nothing to place until something has decided which cells exist.
Show the answer
- Write a behavioural description of what the hardware should do
- Simulate the description to check that its behaviour is what was intended
- Synthesise the description into gates and cells for the chosen technology
- Place the cells on the chip and route the wires between them
- Manufacture the resulting layout
Why
Description, then simulation, then synthesis to gates, then place-and-route, then manufacture. Each stage commits the design further and makes changes more expensive, which is why behaviour is verified before any gate is chosen. The designer works at the top of this chain; the tools handle the millions of decisions below.
Practise Hardware Description Thinking
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