In person in Astana · or on your own, online

Stop consuming tech.
Start building it.

Architect your own RISC-V processor, from a switch to a layout.

The goal here is not theory. It is a design that could be manufactured. We run it as an intensive bootcamp, in a room, with instructors, and if you cannot be in that room you can ask for the material and do it on your own.

Apply for the bootcamp Or work on your own ↓

In person: Astana, as a cohort
Or on your own: Same material, online
Depth: 6 stages
Outcome: Your own CPU

01Two ways in

Build it with us in the room, or on your own

The curriculum, the exercises and the grading are identical either way. What differs is whether you are in the room with the people who wrote it.

The main eventDates announced soon

The bootcamp, in person

An intensive run in Astana, as a cohort, on fixed dates. Days of building with instructors and teaching assistants in the room, and the people beside you stuck on the same bug.

Taught live and in person, not a video you watch alone
Your design reviewed by someone who has taped out a chip
A cohort around you, stuck on the same thing at the same time
A fixed schedule, which is what actually gets people to the end
The same platform underneath: your work is graded here either way

Apply for a seat

If you cannot be thereApply any time

On your own, online

Ask for access and you get an account on this platform: the same lessons, the same deliverables, and the same workbench that compiles and grades your Verilog. You set the pace, and nobody chases you.

The identical curriculum and the identical grading
Self-paced, with your progress saved lesson by lesson
From anywhere, with nothing to install to begin
No live teaching. You find your own bugs.
No cohort, and nobody notices when you stall.

Request solo access

02The deep dive

This is not a lecture series you watch from the couch

Six stages of engineering designed to push your limits and close the gap between theory and a thing that runs. Every lesson ends in something you have to produce, and every exercise is compiled and simulated before anyone calls it done.

No abstract problem sets. No filler. You design your own processor using Verilog and C, verify it against a reference you never get to see, and take it through synthesis and physical design. Most people only read about this. Here you do it.

Architect your own processor from scratch
Design in Verilog and C
From gates to a working RISC-V core
Industry-grade verification
Build your own instruction set
All the way to a manufacturable layout

I'm ready to apply Can’t travel? Request solo access

The next cohort · Astana

Dates for the next run are being set. Applications open before they are announced.

Get your name in early, or start on your own today and come to the room later.

Claim a seat Solo access instead

The numbers don’t lie

6: stages, novice to grandmaster
16: lessons written and open today
18: exercises graded by a simulator
1: CPU you design yourself

03The syllabus

Your 16-lesson journey from theory to silicon

The same syllabus whichever way you come in. Every lesson below exists and is written; each states what you should be able to do by the end of it and lists the deliverables you have to produce before moving on.

01 · NoviceFoundationsGates, logic, and a processor you draw yourself.7 lessons

1
How to Ask Smart Questions
The skill that makes every other lesson faster: keeping a learning log, reading errors properly, and asking questions that actually get answered.
1.5 h
2
Installing and Using Logisim
Get Logisim running and learn the editor well enough to build, wire and probe a circuit without fighting the tool.
2 h
3
Digital Logic, From Transistors Up
How a lump of silicon ends up doing arithmetic: switches become gates, gates become adders and multiplexers, and a feedback loop turns into memory.
8 h
4
A Computer Is Just a State Machine
The most useful idea in the whole course: programs, instruction sets and circuits are all the same kind of thing, and once you see it you cannot unsee it.
6 h
5
Build a Processor with Three Instructions
Assemble ROM, register file, adder and a pile of muxes into T3: a real, running processor that executes a real program.
12 h
6
minirv, A Real RISC-V Processor
Step up from a toy ISA to a genuine one. Eight RISC-V instructions, real memory, and a processor that runs programs a real compiler produced.
15 h
7
Talking to the World, and Leaving Logisim Behind
Give your processor a screen using memory-mapped I/O, then take an honest look at why nobody builds real chips this way, and what they do instead.
6 h

02 · ApprenticeThe Real ToolchainC, Verilog, Linux, and the chip design flow end to end.9 lessons

1
C, The Language Everything Else Speaks
Get properly fluent in C, because every tool, emulator and test program from here on is written in it. Pointers, memory, and reading code you did not write.
10 h
2
Verilog, Describing Circuits in Text
Stop drawing circuits and start writing them. Verilog looks like a programming language and absolutely is not one, and knowing the difference is most of the battle.
10 h
3
Linux and Your Workbench
Install Linux, get fluent in the shell, and set up the environment every tool from here on expects, and find out why installing it yourself is the actual exercise.
8 h
4
From C to Binary, What the Compiler Actually Does
Open up `gcc` and look inside. Preprocessing, parsing, optimisation, assembly, linking, and the standard's four flavours of "we make no promises".
10 h
5
Build an Emulator for Your Own Processor
Write, in C, a program that executes RISC-V instructions. It is the state machine from Novice 4 as a `while` loop, and it becomes the reference your hardware is checked against.
12 h
6
Simulating RTL: Verilator, Waveforms and Testbenches
Turn Verilog into a fast C++ program, drive it from a testbench, and read waveforms. Plus the simulation semantics that explain why race conditions happen at all.
10 h
7
Synthesis, Turning Verilog Into Real Gates
Run your design through yosys, get a netlist of actual standard cells, and find out how big it is, how fast it runs and how much power it burns.
9 h
8
Physical Design, From Netlist to Something a Factory Can Print
Floorplan, power, placement, clock tree, routing, sign-off. The stage where your design stops being logic and becomes geometry.
8 h
9
Build a Debugger, Then Submit Your Work
Build a real debugger for your emulator, then package everything you have made and put it forward for the end-of-stage review.
8 h

Do it with us in the room Or work through it alone

Four further stages, Journeyman to Grandmaster, are being written.

04The ranks

How far will you push? The titles are earned

You do not pass this course, you climb it. Each rank is a real body of work with something at the end of it that either runs or does not, and the top one is the one everybody is after.

Finisher

Novice → Apprentice

You have drawn a processor that runs compiled programs, and then rebuilt the same ideas in the tools the industry actually uses.

Fluent in C and Verilog, at home on Linux
An emulator for your own instruction set
A design taken through simulation, synthesis and physical design

High Achiever

Journeyman → Craftsman

You stop rebuilding what you drew and start designing. A full RV32I core, verified seriously, and then made quick.

Your own RV32I core in Verilog
A verification harness with differential and randomised testing
Pipelining, hazards, caches and branch prediction

Silicon

Top tier

Master → Grandmaster

A processor on its own does nothing. Build the system around it, then take the whole thing to the point where a factory could make it.

A bus, peripherals, interrupts and bring-up firmware
Timing closure across corners, and power analysis
The sign-off checks, done the way they are done for real

Find out how far you get Or start on your own

05Who it is for

Open to everyone. Best if you can get to Astana.

The bootcamp is open to everyone regardless of where you live, provided you can join us in person in Astana for the run. People travelled across the country for the first cohort, and that is exactly the energy we want in the room again.

Can’t make the trip? Then ask for solo access instead and work through the same material from wherever you are. It is the same course; you just do the debugging yourself.

A word of warning either way: this is hardcore. No prior hardware experience is required (the first stage starts at a transistor used as a switch), but you will move fast. Basic programming is expected; C is taught, and comfort on Linux helps.

Ambitious students who want an unfair edge
Software developers craving to understand the silicon underneath
Aspiring engineers chasing the hardest, most rewarding skills
Builders, not consumers
Anyone tired of theory and hungry for something that runs
People who will keep going when it does not work yet

Apply for the bootcamp Request solo access

06Who teaches it

Learn from people who have actually taped out

This is not a course taught by someone reading the textbook one chapter ahead of you. The material comes from people working at the front of semiconductor research, and the feedback comes from engineers who have shipped silicon.

This is what the room buys you. Working alone, the material is the same and the grading is the same, but a person who has been there looking at your design and saying “that will not close timing, and here is why” is the part that cannot be shipped over the internet. It is also why the cohort is kept small.

Course lead

Nursultan Kabylkas

Assistant Professor, Nazarbayev University

A University of California, Santa Cruz graduate with deep Silicon Valley experience. He interned at Esperanto Technologies designing a multi-core AI accelerator, and at AMD, where he continues to contribute to their GPU ISA project. He believes Kazakhstan can become a global leader in semiconductors, and this course is how he is building that future, one chip designer at a time.

07From people who did it

They took the leap. Here is what happened.

When I started the course, I was really new to hardware. I didn’t even know what it was or how to work with it, so it was pretty challenging at first. But with the professor’s help, I learned a lot, from digital circuits to how processors work. I even designed my own processor from scratch.

Kamila Tashimova

I came to this course with doubts and zero knowledge; now I love this field and have a core understanding of how ISA should work. Starting this course was a life-changing decision for me, and I believe it can become one for others too.

Sayat Abdikul

The course is highly practical, with tons of labs, but having your self-crafted processor at the end and being able to write programs for it was very satisfying and worth the time and effort.

Alikhan Balpykov

This course is a breath of fresh air among CS courses. For the first time, I truly felt like I was doing something meaningful. Before starting, I couldn’t have imagined that I would design that processor architecture all by myself.

Yerulan Kongrat

This program helped me develop my intuition about hardware. Theory is, of course, valuable, but when you build something, you encounter certain aspects firsthand, which gives you a deeper understanding of processors.

Moldir Azhimukhanbet

The course taught me to think like a true hardware engineer, always keeping in mind the HDL mantra: “I am describing physical hardware.” Not only did I learn how to design hardware, I learned how to verify it.

Askar Aibar

08How to get in

Free to join, but you have to earn your place

There is no tuition and no hidden fees. The only currency we accept is effort. There is no public registration form, on either route: to protect a high standard of engineering both are selective, and applicants complete technical tasks before joining. Not everyone who asks will get in.

A seat at the bootcamp in AstanaFixed dates, taught in person, strictly limited.Solo access to the platformSame course, your own pace, from anywhere.

01
Ask
Send a short message: who you are, what you have built or studied, and which of the two routes you want. It takes a few minutes.
02
Prove it
Complete the technical tasks we send back. This is how we keep the standard high, and it is your first honest taste of the work.
03
Get in and build
Accepted? One link creates your account and opens the first lesson. If you are coming in person, it also holds your seat.

I already have an account

09Questions

Can’t find your answer? Just ask.

What is the difference between the bootcamp and working on my own?

The material is identical: the same lessons, the same deliverables, the same exercises compiled and graded on the server. The bootcamp adds the thing software cannot: instructors and teaching assistants in the room with you, a fixed schedule that drags you along, and a cohort stuck on the same problem at the same time. Solo access is the honest second best, and it is genuinely the same course.

Where and when does the bootcamp run?

In person in Astana, as an intensive over a fixed set of dates. It is open to everyone regardless of where you live, as long as you can be there for the whole run. People travelled from across the country for the first cohort. Seats are strictly limited and entry is selective.

I cannot travel. Is solo access a consolation prize?

It is the same curriculum and the same grading, so no. But be honest with yourself about the difference. Nobody will notice you have been stuck for three days, and nobody will look over your shoulder at your waveform. It is self-paced, your progress is saved lesson by lesson, and steady weekly hours matter far more than speed.

Do I need to know anything about hardware?

No. The first stage begins with a transistor used as a switch and builds gates, arithmetic and memory from there, inside a circuit simulator you can see into. By the end of it you have drawn a processor that runs compiled programs. Basic programming is expected; C is taught along the way, and comfort on Linux helps.

How is my work actually checked?

Two ways, on both routes. Each lesson lists concrete deliverables you tick off as you produce them, and the practice exercises are graded automatically: your Verilog is compiled with Verilator on the server and simulated against a reference implementation you never see. It matches on every cycle, or it does not.

Will I really design a processor?

Yes. That is the whole point. There are no abstract exercises. You build up from gates to a working RISC-V core in Verilog, verify it against a reference, and take a design through synthesis and physical design to a layout a factory could manufacture.

Still not sure? Get in touch.

Stop consuming tech.Start building it.