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Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

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Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#41

Post by adventured »

mmiller9 wrote: post #6
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

Side note: when people complain about the military budget, projects like these should be noted. Political reality in America, today, is military R&D and jobs programs are easier to fund than civilian ones; so that’s where projects go to live.

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

The large US defense budget is almost entirely due to human costs.

The US has one of the highest median incomes on earth. Now combine that with the large human force that the US military has. The bases, veterans, healthcare, various benefits, retirement, equipment for the humans, salaries, and on it goes.

For example missiles + munition costs are a mere 2% of the military budget. Shipbuilding and maritime systems is a mere 3%. Aircraft and related systems is 5.x%. R&D is about 9%.

The budget related to operating the bases, maintenance, salaries, benefits, vets, and all other related human costs = $500 billion.

There's a strong argument that if you adjust China's military spending to factor in the difference in income / per capita costs for human soldiers vs the US (basically PPP adjusted), that China outspends the US already (and that's with an economy 1/3 smaller):

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-25/china-out...

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#42

Post by aphextron »

rolandog wrote: post #39
aphextron wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But doesn't that mean that it would be cheaper for an adversary to just wait until the excessive military spending makes the US implode, figuratively, in debt? This same concern worried former president Eisenhower back in his days[0]. A similar argument is usually touted regarding the economic strain that the 'Space Race' caused the U.S.S.R.[1]. [0] "The Cold War: An International History", p. 42-43 https://books.goo…

The Space Race bankrupted an already failing command economy in the USSR. However it was a massive economic boon for US capitalists, as evidenced by our aerospace and defense industries today. The great thing about defense spending is that it is almost entirely domestic. We're not running up some huge trade deficit with a foreign power. It creates millions of jobs from Florida to California.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#43

Post by nickpsecurity »

ur-whale wrote: post #28
petra wrote: post #24

I see many chip vendors on the list of participating companies. Won't this project reduce barriers to entry for their industry ? and if so, isn't it against their interests to participate?

I don't believe keeping barrier of entry high in an industry is a good thing for companies in that industry. Quite the contrary, lowering barriers creates more opportunities and thereby new scope for growth. It took MSFT 30 years to finally understand that lesson and start offering a free suite of dev tools. The EDA industry still hasn't groked that lesson.

Microsoft knew what they were doing: using secrecy, obfuscated formats/protocols, copyright law, and patent law to block as much competition as possible. They made billions in the process. The EDA vendors do something similar but mostly acquire competitors. There's just three of them covering the basics parts of ASIC design. They aren't competing on driving prices down, either.

So, their strategy is smart until they, like Microsoft, get in a situation where less and less customers need them. I did think one could do a more open version of EDA, though. I was gonna try to talk to someone at smaller player, Mentor, but they got bought. Im keeping my eyes open for new players wanting a differentiator.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#44

Post by hideo »

adrianmonk wrote: post #12

So it costs $500 million every time someone designs a SoC and (before now) nobody has spent $100 million trying to make that more efficient?

I read that as "nobody has spent $100 million trying to make that more efficient and open sourced it/made it available to smaller companies."

Someone who is NOT in the business of SoC design may have wanted to open source something like this just to commoditize their SoCs. But if you're in that business already, then why help reduce the barrier to entry?

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#46

Post by woolvalley »

rolandog wrote: post #39
aphextron wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But doesn't that mean that it would be cheaper for an adversary to just wait until the excessive military spending makes the US implode, figuratively, in debt? This same concern worried former president Eisenhower back in his days[0]. A similar argument is usually touted regarding the economic strain that the 'Space Race' caused the U.S.S.R.[1]. [0] "The Cold War: An International History", p. 42-43 https://books.goo…

That only works if you can survive the overspend, because it's being used to actively destroy you at the moment.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#47

Post by jayd16 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

Side note: when people complain about the military budget, projects like these should be noted. Political reality in America, today, is military R&D and jobs programs are easier to fund than civilian ones; so that’s where projects go to live.

We could fund this exact project through academic means. We choose to allot funds through the military.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#48

Post by woolvalley »

mips_avatar wrote: post #34
ProAm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok but if 200 planes need to be upgraded so that they don't get shot down by ____ new weapon. It's not possible to build an ASIC for this, so you're probably looking at doing something on an FPGA. You need a few FPGA hardware engineers, electrical engineers, software engineers. Even if the project only takes a year to design, build, and test. And then you spend an extra 6 months because xilinx's fpga tools basically…

America does that all the time with it's poor people.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#49

Post by rixrax »

ur-whale wrote: post #14

"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 i…

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

I'll have popcorn ready for the eventuality where IP blocks are widely available under GPL type of FOSS licenses and Intel|AMD|ARM|TI|... is eventually found to include one or more of those open sourced blocks with incompatible license in their chips.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#50

Post by Fomite »

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.

On the other hand, every time we fire a cruise missile, we're shooting off the equivalent of an NIH R01-scale research grant.
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