>>11765779It's related but not the same.
VLSI is about packing a large circuit onto a tiny chip.
Not necessarily a CPU, but any circuit.
Designing the logic of the circuit is only the first step.
How do you actually build it, i.e. how are the wires, transistors, etc. physically laid out? You can't just put anything anywhere you want: you need to take into account our manufacturing abilities, heat generation, capacitance/switching speed of wire runs, etc.
Just like architects, modern VLSI designers use CAD tools like pic related to help them.
Pic related depicts a basic CMOS inverter (logical NOT gate).
And yes there are VLSI designers making 600k a year out there. Drawing rectangles for a living is pretty demanding work
