Thank you! You people have given me the clues I need to figure out my career.

winterfate · August 2, 2020

I will be pursuing certification in CompTIA ITF, A+, Network+, and Security+, plunging tip-first into the IT world. Having done that, I will be then pursuing over the - fairly prolonged - course of time my CISSP and CBAP. For the time being, the "end" goal is to become a Computer and Information Systems Manager. That is my day job goal. In free time, I will be doing additional studying and most likely developing AI models via Python and implementing papers, and perhaps writing some of my own. My hope is that I might eventually compose something valuable enough to sell of or offer as a cheap service and gain a considerable sum of money, and be able to purchase various machines and equipment to further snowball my knowledge and experience into a great glacier of tech and mats goodness by tinkering and developing on the fly. On a sidenote, has anyone got a lead on one-man processor development, and maybe like a course on chip architecture and the deepest internals of any and all computer components? Not sure what field that falls under. CompTIA is just operation and maintenance.

asquirrel · August 3, 2020

16 hours ago, winterfate said:

On a sidenote, has anyone got a lead on one-man processor development, and maybe like a course on chip architecture and the deepest internals of any and all computer components? Not sure what field that falls under.

On Comptia: Be aware of who you are giving your money to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9JKRItHDME

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSW0Wg32QNI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tihO2H_qUY4

As far as CPU design...no. ASIC design, maybe. But it would be a REALLY small ASIC or you'll be around 40 by the time you get a working design of large size. That said, yes, there are junior and senior level college courses that go over the fundamentals of CPU design and graduate courses that go into how to get fabbing done. Those courses are generally taken by people on the Computer Engineering course, and are electives at that, rather than core classes.

Note: You can't just raw-dog those classes. You need the prep work in lower-level sophomore/junior level classes that explain what a transitor actually is. How to make an AND gate from transistors and other components, how to actually built a (simple, MIPS normally) CPU at the hardware level. Some colleges (mine) will have you use 'emulation' tools to build the CPU, and others will teach you VHDL/Verilog. Both approaches have value. VHDL and verilog are the languages used to actually describe a CPU/ASIC/FPGA so that it can be fabricated or programmed. As in, they literally created a programming language where you can say "Connect pin 1 to pin 7; when a signal on pin1 comes in, pass it to this function, and the function defines, at a hardware level, what should happen (a, for example, 32-bit adder defined in raw AND/OR/NAND/etc gates).

The advantage of the 'emulator' approach is that you end up understanding CPU design at a higher level, and really understanding what you are doing at a logical level rather than down in the weeds of the VHDL/Verilog level. If you're sufficiently intelligent, you can learn either side (logical or specific) on your own once you have one of the two sides. Just depends on your personality.

If you really want to get started creating silicon on your own, I would buy a cheap FPGA ($30-$100) and learn how to program it. Make an FPGA that does something your CPU is bad at (implement double-sha 256 and mine some bitcoin, just as a POC; create a h265 video decoder, then create an encoder. Create an FPGA design for a complex regular expression that takes your CPU minutes to process and then watch the FPGA do the same task in milliseconds. Etc).

Once you can create an FPGA, then I'd dabble with creating ASICs. Once you get to the point where you want to get a chip fabbed? Good luck, my experience stops before you get there. But...just what I've talked about here will probably keep you busy for at least 10 years.

winterfate · August 4, 2020

9 hours ago, asquirrel said:

On Comptia: Be aware of who you are giving your money to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9JKRItHDME

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSW0Wg32QNI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tihO2H_qUY4

As far as CPU design...no. ASIC design, maybe. But it would be a REALLY small ASIC or you'll be around 40 by the time you get a working design of large size. That said, yes, there are junior and senior level college courses that go over the fundamentals of CPU design and graduate courses that go into how to get fabbing done. Those courses are generally taken by people on the Computer Engineering course, and are electives at that, rather than core classes.

Note: You can't just raw-dog those classes. You need the prep work in lower-level sophomore/junior level classes that explain what a transitor actually is. How to make an AND gate from transistors and other components, how to actually built a (simple, MIPS normally) CPU at the hardware level. Some colleges (mine) will have you use 'emulation' tools to build the CPU, and others will teach you VHDL/Verilog. Both approaches have value. VHDL and verilog are the languages used to actually describe a CPU/ASIC/FPGA so that it can be fabricated or programmed. As in, they literally created a programming language where you can say "Connect pin 1 to pin 7; when a signal on pin1 comes in, pass it to this function, and the function defines, at a hardware level, what should happen (a, for example, 32-bit adder defined in raw AND/OR/NAND/etc gates).

The advantage of the 'emulator' approach is that you end up understanding CPU design at a higher level, and really understanding what you are doing at a logical level rather than down in the weeds of the VHDL/Verilog level. If you're sufficiently intelligent, you can learn either side (logical or specific) on your own once you have one of the two sides. Just depends on your personality.

If you really want to get started creating silicon on your own, I would buy a cheap FPGA ($30-$100) and learn how to program it. Make an FPGA that does something your CPU is bad at (implement double-sha 256 and mine some bitcoin, just as a POC; create a h265 video decoder, then create an encoder. Create an FPGA design for a complex regular expression that takes your CPU minutes to process and then watch the FPGA do the same task in milliseconds. Etc).

Once you can create an FPGA, then I'd dabble with creating ASICs. Once you get to the point where you want to get a chip fabbed? Good luck, my experience stops before you get there. But...just what I've talked about here will probably keep you busy for at least 10 years.