At that level, even a microprocessor is just a function block. Encryption engines, DSPs and memory arrays become just so many blocks to arrange in the overall design. The real engineering comes in finishing the last 20 percent-the unique value of the product. To do this, engineers must overcome the urge to design each individual component and even abandon skills that were honed over a career. Tomorrow's chip designers need to think in more high-level architectural terms and less in terms of detailed design.
Architecture is what most designers aspire to, and now it's within almost everyone's grasp.
Leave the grubby details to the IP construction companies. Speaking the languages of both hardware and software will be key. Switch-hitters will be rewarded. A working knowledge of gate-level interactions will be an historical anomaly, a skill that is no longer valuable to all but a few specialists. So don't sweat the details, even if that's what you know best.