[jwatte]

You can start by buying a Papillon board and going through the free range VHDL book. That's the high level.

When you want to understand CMOS and integrated circuits, you need some electronics experimenter kit, and a lot of practice in ohms law. Then read up on multiple gate transistors and (here my experience stops) lithography and small scale challenges (tunneling loss is a thing, I suppose?)

Of course, "ip core" can mean different things, might be some Verilog source, might be some netlists, might be a hard macro for a particular process. You really need to work with it to get the specifics. (Subscribing to EETimes, going to trade shows, and otherwise keeping up might help)

But at the end of the day, you're asking "how can I become and experienced ASIC engineer," and the truth is that it takes time, education, and dedication.

[duskwuff]

The board you're thinking of is the Papilio. The Papillon is a dog breed. :)