The guy figured out the architecture of the chip himself, and asked the AI for tips Claude Opus programs.
An engineer shared his experience designing a processor from scratch in two weeks with no experience. Adam Majmudar claims to have learned the basics of chip architecture, mastered the intricacies of their fabrication, and prepared his first full chip layout using EDA tools, according to Toms Hardware.
Next on the stack acceleration engineer's to-do list chips is the development of a graphics processor from scratch. Once completed, this project will be destined for production using TinyTapeout (Tiny Tapeout — is an educational project that simplifies and cheapens the production of projects on a real chip, — ed.).
Amateurs have tried to create processors with their own hands, as well as graphics chip projects, but it took them years. Majmudar says it took him 14 days to complete everything.
The novice chip developer, who calls himself one of the founding engineers of the web3 development company, describes all the steps he took to create the chip, which he has already done in his search. Here are some of the stages that the engineer managed to overcome:
- studying the basics of microcircuit architecture;
- studying the basics of chip manufacturing — materials, wafer preparation, drawing and packaging.
- automation of electronic design for step-by-step creation of a CMOS transistor;
- creation of the first complete circuit in Verilog — first experience in hardware programming using software;
- implementation of modeling and formal verification for the created circuit;
- design of the first full layout of the microcircuit using OpenLane, an open source EDA tool.
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An important step that Majmudar now has to take is to develop the GPU from scratch. It will be a difficult task even for him. A startup chip designer explains that there simply isn't enough information on the Internet about how graphics chips are made.
“Because all the GPU companies try to keep their secrets from each other, much of the information their architecture is closed source,” — the engineer believes.
Despite this obstacle , Majmudar says that the secrecy of the big GPU manufacturers made this part of the project much more interesting for him.
He used Anthropic's Claude Opus AI tool for his project. The developer would offer Claude Opus his ideas about how each device should work, and then the AI would tell him the correct implementation approaches, which the engineer was then able to confirm using open source repositories.
The design of the homemade GPU will be implemented in the next few days. It might be worth keeping an eye on this engineer. However, you should not forget that between sending the project to TinyTapeout and starting production, quite a lot of time can pass. For example, Rickroll ASIC manufacturer reported that nine months passed between sending his project and realizing the chips on silicon.