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Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

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Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#11

Post by ingenieroariel »

archgoon wrote: post #4
eleitl wrote: post #3

Thought I'll see Olofsson in there.

Sounds like you're familiar with this space and this guy; any thoughts you'd like to share?

I'll bite but consider all I write poorly informed wild speculation.

The person he mentions has been behind a lot of advancements in both getting cheap FPGA based boards to the hands of users and creating libre silicon-proven IP. He recently left his company that was making Zedboards and Parallella among other things to join DARPA.

The last big project he seemed to have worked on was a 1000-core processor of which a lot was open source but a lot of the important bits were protected due to likely an NDA with the factory or the provided of the tools they used.

It hope what he is going to work on (EDA) will finally enable DARPA and others to fund truly open source designs and tools and work with fabrics that would allows access to really cheap ASICs or FPGA based systems, building on all the momentum around platforms like RISCV and his experience creating the Epiphany cores.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#13

Post by ingenieroariel »

ingenieroariel wrote: post #11
archgoon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you're familiar with this space and this guy; any thoughts you'd like to share?

I'll bite but consider all I write poorly informed wild speculation. The person he mentions has been behind a lot of advancements in both getting cheap FPGA based boards to the hands of users and creating libre silicon-proven IP. He recently left his company that was making Zedboards and Parallella among other things to join DARPA. The last big project he seemed to have worked on was a 1000-core processor of which a…

OH! is an open-source library of hardware building blocks based on silicon proven design practices at 0.35um to 28nm. The library is being used by Adapteva in designing its next generation ASIC.

https://github.com/parallella/oh

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#14

Post by ur-whale »

"Most importantly, we have to change the culture of hardware design. Today, we don’t have open sharing … "

This, to the 100th power.

The culture in the EDA industry is stuck in the 1950's when it comes to collaboration and sharing, it's very frustrating for newcomers and people who want to learn the trade.

As was pointed out by someone in another hardware related HN thread, what can you expect from an industry that is still stuck calling a component "Intellectual Property"?

The un-sharing is built into the very names used to describe things.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#15

Post by vkou »

aphextron wrote: post #8
mmiller9 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sincerely doubt our enormously bloated defense budget is because of research...

Guns and bombs are cheap. Everyone has plenty of them. The power of our military is in force prjoection; that is, the ability to use those guns and bombs anywhere at any time. That requires massive, sustained logistics spending. To the point it may seem absurd and wasteful. But the alternative is fighting a fair fight on equal footing. I’d rather not do that.

Who does the US intend to fight, and over what?

This logistic spending is certainly not for national defense - it has two oceans, a navy, and two thousand nuclear warheads for that purpose.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#16

Post by GW150914 »

aphextron wrote: post #8
mmiller9 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sincerely doubt our enormously bloated defense budget is because of research...

Guns and bombs are cheap. Everyone has plenty of them. The power of our military is in force prjoection; that is, the ability to use those guns and bombs anywhere at any time. That requires massive, sustained logistics spending. To the point it may seem absurd and wasteful. But the alternative is fighting a fair fight on equal footing. I’d rather not do that.

Guns and bombs are cheap. The Zumwalt, F-35, B-2, and more are not cheap. I would point out that “smart” bombs and cruise missiles are not cheap, and the cost really starts to add up. Nuclear weapons research, production, and maintenance isn’t cheap.

So really it’s fair to say that guns and bombs aren’t cheap, but they are also a distraction from the delivery systems, which are catastrophically expensive.

the point it may seem absurd and wasteful. But the alternative is fighting a fair fight on equal footing. I’d rather not do that.

Yeah? Are you sure the alternative isn’t to spend 3 or 4 or 5 times as much as any other nation instead of 7 times as much? Maybe the alternative is to avoid boondoggles, and focus on proven tech. Of course the real alternative is that doing so would get in the way of the real business of arms dealing.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#17

Post by [deleted] »

ProAm wrote: post #9
killjoywashere wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DoD budget exceeds Google's market cap, and their research budget exceeds Google's annual revenue.

But they dont spend it nearly as efficiently. Gov is slow and bloated. It's why government contracts are so coveted, lots of money, long term contracts, overages are just part of life.

[deleted]
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