[marcan_42]

The Verilog source code for the N64 ASICs leaked at some point, it's been floating around the internet for a while. So there's very little you couldn't figure out by looking at that, at this point.

That's relatively recent, though; the vast majority of the emulation knowledge was from reverse engineering, patents, and typical devkit leak stuff as you say.

[Narann]

Verilog RDP leak is overrated, IMHO. It helps to shape “broadly” how the black box (for the time) RDP works so RE work can starts.

TBH, most peoples still prefer to RE on dedicated N64 hardware (hand crafted physical CPU interrupt/inspection). The problem is Verilog source alone is not that useful as you need to “plug” it to CPU with the N64 interface.

[ioseph]

Wow I had no idea verilog was used for ASIC design this far back, for some reason I assumed it came along with FPGAs

[ChuckNorris89]

>Wow I had no idea verilog was used for ASIC design this far back

"This far back" is not that far back. N64 came out in 1996, at which point custom ASIC design and EDA tooling was already commonplace.

Verilog appeared in 1984, and EDA tooling was in use way before that.

What's more commonplace today is the number of fabless IP companies in the semi space that focus exclusively on selling only IP, rather than selling fully made chips, like SGI, NEC, TOSHIBA, etc. did back then.

[AussieWog93]

FPGAs have been commercially available since the 80's!