[HN Gopher] Make Your Own Chips for Free
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Make Your Own Chips for Free
Author : obl
Score : 84 points
Date : 2022-05-29 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (efabless.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (efabless.com)
| ramshanker wrote:
| So how many transistors ( or GATES? ) that 10mm^2 is at 130nm?
| breck wrote:
| Approximately 590M max? (10^.5 * 1e6 / 130)^2
|
| But not actually sure what % is usable and what distance
| between features is. So guess is actual number is a lot less
| than that.
| d_tr wrote:
| Ten million transistors maximum actually. The nm figure is
| not a transistor pitch.
| DaviNunes wrote:
| I wonder how difficult/efficient would it be to use this tech to
| design a bitcoin mining ASIC.
| ttul wrote:
| Having failed to launch a mining ASIC company in 2012, my only
| comment would be that the Caravel 130nm process will not be
| power-competitive with commercial mining chip. It would be a
| fun educational project, however.
| lekevicius wrote:
| I'm curious about this question, even though it's a bit off-
| topic: how likely is it that an entity (commercial or
| governmental) could "secretly" produce enough mining hardware
| to consistently have 51% of network's hash power?
| ntoskrnl wrote:
| The biggest mining pools have known identities[1]. If some
| unknown group started mining and the hashrate jumped 50%,
| it would draw lots of attention. There's no way it could be
| done secretly. A more likely attack would be a government
| bribing or coercing a few of the biggest mining pools to
| manipulate their blocks.
|
| [1]: https://btc.com/stats/pool
| IncRnd wrote:
| How unlikely is it for that not to have already happened?
| r0n22 wrote:
| How did you determine that it was not viable? Anymore
| information you could provide?
| Stevvo wrote:
| Bitmain are using the latest process nodes for their ASICs.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Not GP, but this isn't something you'd need to calculate.
| 130nm transistors are so much larger, with so much higher
| power consumption to modern 7nm transistors, that it'd be
| like comparing the fuel consumption of a motorbike to a
| school bus.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| I was very upset this was not about making Potato Chips.
| Seriously.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| Me too. Now that we're here, maybe anyone knows how to make
| chips at home?
| krallja wrote:
| slice up potatoes
|
| fry the slices in oil
|
| salt the fried slices
| f0e4c2f7 wrote:
| Schedule April 11, 2022: Project submission is
| OPEN June 8, 2022: Project submission is CLOSED
| sideshowb wrote:
| Money for nothing...
| bruce511 wrote:
| And your Chips for free...
|
| (I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't have, but sometimes I. Can't.
| Help. Myself.)
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Such poor discipline must put you in dire straights.
| [deleted]
| ttul wrote:
| This is a fantastic program for teaching students about VHDL. You
| can make some really cool stuff on a 130nm process with 10mm^2
| available. Like a full toy SoC. Really cool.
| Matthias247 wrote:
| Do FPGAs not already fulfill this purpose very well? I did 3
| FPGA projects (custom networking peripheral, some radar related
| things) during my inversity time using VHDL and really enjoyed
| them (apart from the slow synthesis time).
|
| Real chips would certainly provide more room, possibilities and
| performance - but would also take away from the fast turnaround
| time that FPGAs provide. And given this run only seems to give
| people a single shot to get the design right - you want to
| verify it on a FPGA upfront anyway.
| [deleted]
| malf wrote:
| Is there any situation where you wouldn't try to verify on an
| FPGA first?
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Too big to fit on an FPGA that you can afford.
| Lukas_Skywalker wrote:
| Where should one go to get started with such a project? I have
| some experience with embedded systems (hardware design and
| programming of systems with an of the shelf microcontroller).
| But it's difficult to see the ,,unknown unknowns".
| nostrademons wrote:
| I'm curious if anyone has more details on the Skywater 130nm
| process. A cursory websearch indicated that it's an open-source
| CMOS process. Is it new or has it been around for a while? Lots
| of suppliers or just a single one?
|
| I've been thinking that with supply chains breaking down,
| there's possibly a market opportunity for semiconductors to
| move back to older, cheaper process nodes that are easier to
| build a fab for, ensure there's a robust supply, and recover
| some of the recent performance improvements through less-
| bloated software. Chips were "good enough" back around 2001,
| when the 130nm process was introduced. In a world where you
| can't count on robust transportation & commerce and global (or
| even national) markets may fragment, it may make sense to be
| able to assure chip supply locally, even at the expense of
| absolute performance (which is less important when you can't be
| sure there's a single winner-take-all market). Would this
| program be a step toward that world?
| rrss wrote:
| One supplier: skywater.
|
| In 1990, Cypress Semiconductor acquired a Control Data fab,
| which became Cypress Fab 4. At some point they developed a
| 130nm process. In 2017, cypress sold the fab to skywater,
| which was formed specifically to operate this fab. Skywater,
| google, and efabless collaborated to publish the PDK for the
| 130nm process.
|
| "Old" processes like this have lots of uses, even before the
| recent supply chain issues (which were/are often worse for
| mature processes than more leading edge stuff). They are
| commonly used in automotive / embedded stuff, and the US
| government / military require US-based semiconductor
| fabrication for some contracts.
| queuebert wrote:
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| > The repo must include project documentation and adhere to
| Google's inclusive language guidelines. See details here.
|
| "Inclusive". Ah.
|
| When I'm writing technical documentation, it has one goal: to
| describe the project to anyone who wants to use it. "Inclusivity"
| is not a part of my goalset.
| qgin wrote:
| > anyone who wants to use it
|
| That "anyone" isn't a fixed set. The guidelines Google is
| listing are pretty minor steps someone can take to try to
| maximize the size of that set.
| lolinder wrote:
| There are probably minor steps that can be taken, but
| Google's guidelines are not that. Following Google's
| guidelines would involve completely reworking large parts of
| our vocabulary: more than just "whitelist" and "blacklist",
| we're now supposed to avoid "hit the API", "the process
| hangs", "native code", "first-class functions", "sanity
| check", "dummy variable", "senior citizens", and a bunch of
| other completely innocent phrases that Google is worried that
| someone somewhere might be offended by.
|
| Going through my documentation and worrying about the
| _possible_ misinterpretations of _every single word_ is not a
| minor step.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _Going through my documentation and worrying about the
| possible misinterpretations of every single word is not a
| minor step._
|
| That's OK, I'm sure they'll do it for you, when they decide
| where to rank it in their index of search results.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| That's a very silly requirement for a tech project IMO. I'm not
| sure what qualifies as "inclusive language" and the link ("See
| details here") seems to be missing.
|
| Of course Google is free to put any requirements they want on a
| project they fund (as long as it's within the bounds of the
| law) but "inclusive language" is the last thing I'd expect an
| evil corporation profiteering off everyone's data to put on
| there so front and center. I don't see anything in there about
| privacy, safety, or ethics, so you can presumably get free
| control chips for killer drones as long as you make it open
| source and use the right pronouns in your documentation?
| lin83 wrote:
| It's probably a good idea to avoid insulting or alienating your
| audience. My manager is a woman and I run into code and setup
| documentation all the time that says things like "he should do
| X/Y/Z". At least our documentation team fixes that before
| public release.
|
| Google's guidelines are here:
| https://developers.google.com/style/inclusive-documentation
|
| I have to say though some of their examples are weird. I have
| never encountered anyone that would object to the phrase
| "senior citizens" or the word "hang" in documentation. The idea
| that the latter could cause "unintentional harm that might be
| caused by the violent interpretations" is frankly absurd.
| userbinator wrote:
| _I have to say though some of their examples are weird._
|
| You should be scared and deeply angered that Google is
| attempting to force changes to language which are mainly
| based on some radical political ideology.
| lin83 wrote:
| I am absolutely concerned about some of their actions, like
| their paused "inclusive suggestions" [1]. There's a big
| difference between providing a guide and highlighting words
| in an email that are marked as 'wrong' purely for perceived
| cultural reasons.
|
| Google's suggestion to change "landlord" for example, which
| has very specific cultural baggage and, more importantly,
| legal definitions, to something else is definitely wrong
| and worrying. I think it takes a certain arrogance that
| maybe only a Silicon Valley tech company can have to try to
| change how billions of people speak.
|
| I'm not sure how much of an ideology it is though. Like the
| writers guide above, once the reasonable suggestions have
| been made, the authors seem to overreach to find more
| things to "fix". If a persons job depends on finding
| "problems" they will simply create new ones once the run
| out of legitimate ones. I think that's true whether it's
| planning officers for property development or politicians.
|
| [1]
| https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/apr/25/google-
| word...
| azinman2 wrote:
| I guarantee you there's no job at Google that solely
| consists of trying to find new language to ban. That's
| absurd.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Have you never worked in a large company before? These
| people are everywhere, and breeding like rats!
| lin83 wrote:
| I don't believe I said that is the case. A situation with
| poor or unintended incentives is not hard to imagine.
|
| 1) A team is tasked with providing suggestions to improve
| emails
|
| 2) "Inclusive language" or avoiding potentially insulting
| language is added as a feature by higher ups
|
| 3) The more entries in the "Inclusive language" feature
| the better the outcome looks to management or it helps
| meet some arbitrary employee metric (velocity or x issues
| resolved or similar)
|
| 4) More and more entries get added because it is easy to
| do
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| > It's probably a good idea to avoid insulting or alienating
| your audience.
|
| I already avoid insulting or alienating my audience. I don't
| need to write "inclusively" to do that. Good documentation is
| already bland and unoffensive.
|
| > I have to say though some of their examples are weird.
|
| And that's _exactly_ what I object to. Something absurd like,
| "Use the term 'main' instead of 'master' for your
| repository's primary branch." Why? Because... ...slavery?
| This is lunacy.
|
| Five months later, this arbitrary standard will change again.
| Talking about "primary branches" is now offensive, because it
| implies that one branch is more central than the others, and
| this is offensive to plural beings who identify as a Crape
| Myrtle tree. [1]
|
| It's literally a bunch of people imagining ways that things
| can be misconstrued as offensive, and twisting language to
| the point of absurdity. I have better things to do with my
| time than to run on euphemism treadmills.
|
| 1 - https://www.pluralpride.com/playbook
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| Frequently this has to be mandated to some degree,
| otherwise you get people who feel using male pronouns and
| names exclusively is fine even if the target audience is
| overwhelmingly female or that "shit" is a perfectly fine
| synonym for "stuff" in official documents or that terms
| that are considered brutally racist by everyone but the
| very far right are fine for public release because they are
| technically correct in an extremely narrow way. It saves
| everyone a lot of time and breath if there is a mandatory
| set of guidelines to point to; adhere to them or this will
| not get released. If those guidelines are done well, it's
| hardly ever an issue except for those special types that
| are on some kind of crusade or whatever.
| jpindar wrote:
| Let me guess... senior citizens is probably offensive to the,
| uh, differently documented.
| amluto wrote:
| Google's requirement is not inclusive toward anyone trying to
| follow it. In particular, "See details here" doesn't appear to
| be any sort of a link.
|
| That being said, I think I found the relevant document:
|
| https://developers.google.com/style/inclusive-documentation
|
| And it seems pretty reasonable to me.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Some parts of it are very reasonable, but others seem insane
| to me. "Sanity-check" is hardly ableist language in my
| opinion, and neither is "dummy variable".
|
| I agree with the intentions here, but this goes a bit too far
| for me.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > Although there might also be nonviolent interpretations
| for these terms, avoiding their use prevents unintentional
| harm that might be caused by the violent interpretations.
|
| I can't even try to imagine what someone would do if you
| suggested they "bit banged" an interface.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| What's interesting to me about all the "bad" examples in
| that section is that they don't match how people actually
| use those terms. At all. You don't "sanity check" a
| polished, should-be-perfect release candidate. You sanity-
| check a half-baked napkin sketch. And so on.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| A bit tangential, but can anyone recommend a forum for
| productively debating the logic/ethics underpinning this kind
| of policy?
|
| I'm deeply skeptical about lots diversity initiatives. But
| it's hard to find a place where I can subject my views to
| good scrutiny without also risking unemployment.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Here's my advice.
|
| The evershifting and arbitrary nature of these standards is
| a guarantee that you will eventually fall afoul of it, face
| a kangaroo court trial in the DEI star chamber, and be
| burnt at the stake for your "crimes".
|
| You can try and avoid it. It will come to you. The best
| place and time to fight it is right now. But you don't need
| to oppose it, you just need to not submit to it. [1]
|
| 1 - https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/ ( _nee_ Slate Star
| Codex) comes to mind.
| baremetal wrote:
| you will include non-technical issues in your technical
| documentation and you will like it?
| amluto wrote:
| It's more like "if you want us to pay for your project,
| kindly refrain from the unnecessary use of wording that is
| offensive, in non-technically-required ways, in your
| documentation."
|
| Is that really so bad?
| lolinder wrote:
| Did you look at the guidelines? Their definition of
| offensive seems to be "someone, somewhere might completely
| misinterpret what you said in such a way as to take
| offense." In the real world, no one takes offense at the
| phrase "first-class functions", but in Google's world
| someone apparently does.
| userbinator wrote:
| The main problem is that it's explicitly pushing a certain
| political agenda.
| klyrs wrote:
| Free speech absolutism is also a certain political
| agenda. At some point, _everything_ is political and if
| you don 't like it, you'll need to go off grid and
| definitely stay offline.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| > At some point, everything is political
|
| No. Football is a-political. Thanksgiving dinner is
| a-political. My javascript library is a-political. My
| silicon design is a-political.
|
| What's happened is an extremely small subset of people
| have decided to push politics where it doesn't belong.
| Everything must become a political weapon, because
| everything must serve the goal of some arbitrary
| progress. Merely existing without putting on badges in
| support of The Latest Thing(TM) is offensive -- because
| you have implicitly not taken a side, which explicitly
| means you are supporting the enemy. And if that goal
| requires sacrifice of thanksgiving dinner and family,
| than so be it.
|
| It's done _wonders_ to improve society 's polarization
| problem, I tell you.
| ravenstine wrote:
| No one said a word about free speech "absolutism."
| klyrs wrote:
| That doesn't refute my point, does it? One can ride a
| bike without saying a word about riding bikes, after all.
| [deleted]
| jagger27 wrote:
| Where is it explicitly pushing a "certain political
| agenda"? Is there a footnote somewhere that says "these
| documentation requirements were sponsored by <x> for
| congress"? You surely mean implicit. What obligation does
| Google have to be apolitical anyway? To make you feel
| more comfortable?
| userbinator wrote:
| It's definitely more explicit than NOT having such
| requirements, which would be the expected norm for
| technical things.
|
| Google has a HUGE amount of power over people's lives
| now, arguably more than the government. It has
| effectively become a form of government itself, but one
| we didn't vote for. Do you not see a problem with that?
| jagger27 wrote:
| Google a ton of dangerous unchecked power, absolutely.
| But it's a documentation style guide that sets off your
| alarms? Get over yourself.
| userbinator wrote:
| The alarms have been going for a long time. This is just
| the frog-boiling water getting a little hotter.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| OK, we'll tell George Orwell to get over himself. He was
| the one who warned us about giving excessive amounts of
| power to people who want to control the language.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Yep. They're attempting to strong arm people into Orwellian
| newspeak.
|
| And good grief. The potential to spin an open source ASIC for
| free, simply to get experience is an AMAZING opportunity.
|
| But I'll leave engineering before I submit to the arbitrary
| and ever changing demands of some potentate of newspeak.
| Doubleplusungood.
| [deleted]
| userbinator wrote:
| Google is now the Ministry of Truth? I really wonder whether
| the people who come up with this stuff ever read 1984, or did
| and thought Newspeak was a good idea.
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