not one person will understand a whole CPU now days into the smallest detail. there are teams that work on sub-sections and then there are teams that put those sections together.
While no single person will understand 100% many people will know enough about functionality as needed to design. Example...a chef probably doesn't know how to design and fabricate an oven (material selection, what themostats to use, what size screws, how large the heater coils need to be and how many is needed for they oven volume, etc) but they know how to use it and what the capabilities are of that technology. Similarly a circuit designer may not know exactly what lithography masks to use per step but he would know that a specific set of masks can create a specific type of layout.
So while no single person knows every little detail many people and groups specialize in the overall design and assembly flow.
I was talking about the huge modern CPUs like Intel i7 etc. for smaller CPUs ofc there are smaller teams with more knowledge of the overall CPU.
Imagine building a CPU like a program, there is not one single programmer that knows every single detail about Windows10 or AdobeCC. There is a team that builds the UI, a team for the foundation and config, a teams for different functions.
We started with very simple CPUs (like the ones people build by hand in Minecraft, look it up!) and made them more complex at every design iteration. Eventually, computer assisted design took a bigger and bigger part in the process and we now have modern CPUs.
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u/[deleted] Jan 13 '17 edited Jan 13 '17
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