Unfortunately, all the humans who knew how to do custom VLSI design are dead, retired, or doing something else Well, sort of. The ol' DEC guys are still out th

Unfortunately, all the humans who knew how to do custom VLSI design are dead, retired, or doing something else Well, sort of. The ol' DEC guys are still out there, many at semiconductor companies. Anyway, design is not the biggest lever right now, and it stabilizes last. When architecture & process slow down, design will probably see increased focus as you finally have more time for squeezing out 20% extra speed- and without everything being tossed the next go-round.