Mostly I'm just trying to explain just how (relatively) hard things are, so people wont get too far out of their depth. I'd really recommend doing the usual HLL

Mostly I'm just trying to explain just how (relatively) hard things are, so people wont get too far out of their depth. I'd really recommend doing the usual HLL/assembler approach - start with a verilog only implementation, build a test bench (tiny tapeout has infrastructure for this), look at the bits you want to be faster/denser, try a hand compiled gates implementation (you can do this within verilog for a start), then maybe even hand lay it out Yes, I live south of you in Dunedin, though I worked in the SF Bay Area for a couple of decades doing all sorts of stuff including chips, OS's, embedded crypto stuff etc