Yes, the original 6502 was laid out by hand on Mylar with pencils and X-acto knives by only a couple people. A motivated hobbyist could probably do it in a week

Yes, the original 6502 was laid out by hand on Mylar with pencils and X-acto knives by only a couple people. A motivated hobbyist could probably do it in a weekend in VHDL. The more interesting thing I think is that the existence of this official IP core implies that it is already out in production in millions of components, like the Tamagotchi[1] and Furby[2], presumably running at a very diverse array of clock frequencies. I wonder which product has the fastest WDC 6502? [1] https://hackaday.com/2013/05/24/tamagotchi-rom-dump-and-reverse-engineering/ https://hackaday.com/2013/05/24/tamagotchi-rom-dump-and-reve... [2] https://official-furby.fandom.com/wiki/Furby_(1998)/Technical_information https://official-furby.fandom.com/wiki/Furby_(1998)/Technica...