I work in this field and this is 100 percent true. It's really hard to learn about too. A lot of textbooks go over the algorithms in the chips in an idealized form. The actual versions are so messy and different that the textbooks aren't even useful sometimes, especially if you work on custom ISPs. It's cursed, but it's fun.

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skoocda 2 days ago | parent [-]

Are there any resources you would recommend for learning about real implementations?

	▲	ironman1478 a day ago \| parent [-]
		Unfortunately no. It's all proprietary and locked up. However, I can say that the optimizations are not always about IQ (though that is a major factor). It's also about making things run fast enough in a low latency environment. Those two requirements lead to strange hardware designs that lead to strange register interfaces.