How do you even get started on reverse engineering the emotion engine?

[wuschelbeutel]

Is there an open document that describes how each unit of the CPU is laid out (e.g., thousands of units in branch prediction, bus interface logic etc.) or do you literally look at the lithography of the chip or is something else used?

[refraction]

Is there an open document that describes how each unit of the CPU is laid out (e.g., thousands of units in branch prediction, bus interface logic etc.) or do you literally look at the lithography of the chip or is something else used?

thousands is a bit of an exageration However those same documents explain how the processor works, so it's really a case of trying to mimick the behavour it explains.