[HN Gopher] The Myth of Loss: Bitboys
___________________________________________________________________
The Myth of Loss: Bitboys
Author : davikr
Score : 54 points
Date : 2024-05-12 13:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hardforum.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hardforum.com)
| Nokinside wrote:
| Biboys sold for near $50 million to ATI, then it was sold to
| Qualcomm.
|
| This is how most semiconductor startups work. Do better and show
| innovation that is bought buy bigger players.
| miohtama wrote:
| The problem with hardware business is that it's capital
| intensive: large, expensive product runs needed. Not many are
| happy to upfront the bill for a new, unproven, company. Whileas
| in software business, the upfront cost is fractions, and thus
| VCs love it more.
|
| Thus, in hardware, funding comes from the existing players who
| already know the hardware business with its cyclic business and
| other associated risks.
| dartos wrote:
| This 100%.
|
| One (A SINGLE) photolithography machine is like $4B.
|
| There's no way for a new player to enter the CPU market
| jstanley wrote:
| You wouldn't normally be physically manufacturing CPUs
| yourself.
|
| Most likely you'd be supplying an "IP core", which is
| basically just software. More niche than that, if you
| actually wanted to supply physical chips, you would
| contract out the manufacturing to TSMC for example.
| bittwiddle wrote:
| This is why most "semiconductor" companies are actually
| fabless, focusing on design while working with a
| partner(like TSMC) to have their designs manufactured.
| mlyle wrote:
| I remember hanging out with Carl Amdahl after we were
| pitched our nth fabless semiconductor company, and him
| making the joke that if he ever started another company
| making IC designs, this time he would call it Fabulous
| Semiconductor.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| And even fabbed semiconductor companies de-fab
| themselves, like AMD.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalFoundries
| throwup238 wrote:
| I don't think it's a problem with how much capital hardware
| requires. Biotech startups require an order of magnitude more
| capital with tons more risk with regulatory approval yet the
| biotech VC industry is _huge_ - the amount invested annually
| frequently exceeds all of tech VC. Most of the startups that
| go public do so with zero revenue, let alone profit, and
| everyone is perfectly fine to bankroll them through clinical
| trials even though they 're all or nothing.
|
| I think there's two problems with hardware: first the
| marginal profit per unit doesn't scale so to make more profit
| you have to sell more widgets. The same is mostly true for
| biotech but the profit margins on a drug are usually >95%,
| with a much higher ceiling, and are heavily recurring, often
| for the life of a patient. Since biotech customers are mostly
| insurance companies, the value of a drug is easy to calculate
| based on its quality of life improvements and past deals.
|
| Second, success is very all or nothing for hardware
| companies. Each hardware startup will have a limited number
| of possible acquirers who specialize in their field so they
| either become profitable and go public or fail. On the other
| hand, failed tech companies get acquihired by the tech giants
| and pharmaceutical companies acquire tons of companies before
| they even finish clinical trials. Any startup that makes it
| past phase 3 trials has a 99% chance of getting acquired by a
| pharmaceutical company so the economics of investing are very
| enticing, despite the massive capital outlays.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| It's amazing how many 3D start-ups spun out of the Finish demo
| scene Future Crew: Bitboys, Remedy Entertainment, 3DMark, and I'm
| pretty sure others that I'm missing. Anyone know why Finland is
| such an innovative 3D/software powerhouse?
| pavlov wrote:
| In my opinion as someone who grew up inside it, the factors
| that created this fertile ground in Finland for young computer
| hackers in the 1980s and '90s were:
|
| - High-quality educational system, but without pressures to
| perform (unlike e.g. many Asian countries). There are no
| standard exams in Finnish schools except a single national one
| at the end of high school. Teachers all have a master's degree,
| it's usually a lifelong career, and they have (had?) lots of
| latitude to create their own curriculums.
|
| - An economic boom in 1984-89 that enabled many households to
| acquire home computers.
|
| - Long and dark winters that left kids with plenty of time.
| Combined with the aforementioned educational system, you had
| teenagers who were already pretty good at math and English
| playing around with computers on ample free time.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Demoscene. Assembly demo party.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_(demoparty)
|
| Each of the companies you name and more had core people who
| learned their skills writing demos to Commodore 64, Atari or
| PC.
| Jensson wrote:
| Sweden also is strong in similar areas due to that same effect,
| so the cause should apply to both.
|
| I'd say a big effect is lack of respect for authority figures,
| people speak up when they see something wrong with no regards
| to status or authority, and managers tend to accept that. This
| makes experienced people learn from juniors much better than in
| many other cultures, which is great to explore new fields. So
| the game cracking scene that was a big part of the demo scene
| is just an expression of that strong anti authoritarian
| culture.
|
| In Japan you have to respect your leader, and in USA you have
| to be an optimist and not criticize your manager, so their
| cultures doesn't really get the same effect. It is so much
| easier when you can just straight out say that someone's demo
| was bad at something and could probably be made better, and
| they just listen and improve without you having to be an
| authority figure.
| smokel wrote:
| The demoscene was an interesting social phenomenon where
| "street credit" from the graffiti scene was applied to math
| dorks. This created a competitive atmosphere that made you stay
| up late, reading CGPP, PC Intern, and Ferraro.
| to11mtm wrote:
| I think a few factors/explanations, based on what I remember
| from colleagues on EFNet...
|
| - Teachers/professors have a more actualized social
| selection/prestige; the pay is better (especially comparing to
| a similar US university) so there is more incentive for
| talented people to stay in education vs go into private sector.
|
| - Finland has a high level of government programs to help
| industries in various ways. As an example from another
| industry, Children of Bodom recorded many of their albums in a
| government owned/sponsored recording studio.
|
| - Finland also has free education. I'm betting a lot of people
| saw the possibilities, it was likely a bit easier to break into
| back then.
|
| That said, If you look at the late 80s and early 90s, Finland
| was a sleeping tech giant. IRC, Linux, InnoDB, Symbian (love it
| or hate it) all are products from that era...
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Presumably this post is a follow-on to this one from the weekend:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40315990
| MisterTea wrote:
| I remember the PC Gamer issue featuring the tech. You had all
| those old wild western town screen shots showing things like HDR
| lighting before HDR was a thing (or felt like it). I also
| remember E-DRAM (on-die embedded DRAM) that promised insane
| texture filling speeds. It was exciting at the time as 3D was
| really blowing up and realism was edging closer and closer.
| Though noting ever came of it, I always remembered the name
| Bitboys. I never knew actual hardware existed either.
|
| I was in uni at the time and a professors son went to work for
| ATI working on graphics chips and I thought it must have been a
| dream job but the professor countered: "He says it's a boring job
| dragging libraries of gates into designs, verifying, debugging,
| and moving on" The following year I heard the son jumped ship to
| a gaming company doing engine work and loved it.
| torusle wrote:
| Hardware existed.
|
| Around 2006 I had some automotive entertainment system from NEC
| on my table which had one of the Bitboys GPU chips on it. Wrote
| some vector graphics API for it.
|
| It wasn't bad honestly. It supported OpenGL/ES 1.0 I only had
| to contact them twice for driver bugs. They resolved that
| within a few days.
| mrgaro wrote:
| Very weird take to call Future Crew a "research group" and Second
| Reality a "graphics technology". Future Crew was a PC Demo group
| (in Demo Scene) and Second Reality an excellent and ground
| breaking demo. There wasn't any magic technology in it, but
| instead some very clever effects from the members, bound together
| into an artistic demo.
|
| I cannot comment anything about the facts what came after with
| Bitboys, but the author doesn't seem to know the history and
| details on their demo scene origins.
| blacklion wrote:
| I come to write this comment.
|
| Only I don't think "Second Reality" is very artistic. It is
| very impressive technically, but, to be honest, now you could
| see that it is quilt made from technical demos from different
| people. Yes, all these sub-demos are technical masterpieces,
| but demo as whole doesn't have some story or narrative to tell.
|
| I've re-watched it (youtube rendering) now and, to be honest,
| these 10 minutes is not entertaining, till you remember on
| which hardware and in how much codesize it was squeezed.
|
| Embossed nuts? Jumping platonic solids? Yes, very impressive
| for person who tried to program graphics on PC in 1993 and
| fantastic technical achievement, but artistic? I cannot say so,
| sorry.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-05-13 23:01 UTC)