It should be noted that Andreas Olofsson used to run Adapteva and close to singlehandedly designed the Parallella processor.
Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler
91–100 of 268 posts
Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler
#92I wonder if the decline of Moore’s Law will eventually lead to the commotidization of ASIC fabrication?
Of course fabricating a chip will never be as cheap as writing a bit of software, but maybe it will eventually be as cheap as, say, injection molding a piece of plastic?
Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler
#93I wonder if the decline of Moore’s Law will eventually lead to the commotidization of ASIC fabrication? Of course fabricating a chip will never be as cheap as writing a bit of software, but maybe it will eventually be as cheap as, say, injection molding a piece of plastic?
No matter what, you'll need to clear a certain volume floor. Masks are expensive [0] especially for nicer process nodes.
Once you have a mask set and fab time, it's off to the races. IMO $1M really isn't bad for a simple chip run.
Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
They’re at war with Russia because they gave up their nuclear weapons. No one is invading a nuclear power, which I think is the point the post you’re responding to was making.
How you know that Ukraine still doesn't have nuclear weapons?
Because I assume that the Russians, when they armed it (In Soviet times), and then disarmed it (In post-Soviet times), could count up to, and back down from twenty.
If they still have weapons, they sure as hell haven't been using their existence as a deterrent. The whole point of having nukes is letting potential aggressors know that you have them, and that, if attacked, you may be crazy enough to use them.
Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler
#95So 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 think the primary focus / value here would be if they can somehow dramatically reduce the cost of making masks and IC's. Lets say these researchers make the actual process of converting C code to silicon super easy, then you go to make the chip and they are like, "cool, the mask / fab cost is like 500k USD for samples" -- then basically the exact same people who currently make chips will keep making chips. What would be awesome would be if DARPA funded somebody converting an old 90nm fab into a low cost foundry that was basically fully automated and subsidized it to allow people to make a chip design for $1000 USD, then you would have a flood of people just being like, "well, its $1000 bucks, why the hell not try to make this chip even if its wrong.." most businesses would happily roll the dice on stuff for that kind of price, and some individuals would as well.
Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
The exact same arguments have been perused ad nauseam by old-timers in the software industry in the 80's and 90's when they clamored against open-source being anti-capitalist and un-american. Not sure how and why H/W is different.
Different level of liability. When GPL missteps are discovered in software, the offender can usually just re-release the software without the GPL code and move on. In hardware…it's soldered into a bunch of devices all over the place. Consider Intel taking a $475 million hit for the FDIV bug (requiring a hardware replacement) vs the invisible bugfixing through microcode (i.e., software) they do now.
They would just need to pay a fee to the copyright owner for the violations, not replace all the existing hardware.
Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
We could fund this exact project through academic means. We choose to allot funds through the military.
A lot of academic funds have military roots?
and why do they have to?
in australia we have CSIRO which does some amazing research, and our military budget is basically non existent compared to the US military budget
Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The Zumwalt, F-35, B-2, and more are not cheap. You're right, they sure aren't. But as a result no other military force on earth besides NATO has the capability to launch air superiority fighters from amphibious assault ships, and perform multi-ton circumglobal bombing sorties. That kind of capability doesn't come cheap, and shouldn't be dismissed. Take away the B2 and we are fighting to-to-toe with Russian/Chinese…
If the US military is, in any serious way, going toe-to-toe with Russian/Chinese bombers, I hope you've got your fallout shelter stocked, because as likely as not, both sides in the conflict will cease to exist ~20 minutes after that point in time.
The point is not “Russia vs. USA” in an all out conventional war. It’s about spheres of influence. If I can project my will upon the (non-nuclearized) world more effectively than anyone else, my power increases substantially.
It’s why Russia is considered only a regional power, despite having a larger nuclear arsenal than the US. Their ability to perform intercontinental conventional bombing and troop deployment is non-existent. To cede this power to any other nation would be catastrophic to world peace.
Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any tips on getting started with FPGA on custom pcbs?
What exactly do you mean by "getting started with FPGA on custom PCBs?" Have you made custom PCBs with high density BGAs before? Most non-trivial FPGAs (to me that means you can easily fit a decent softcore processor with space left over for your FPGA logic) will be ball grid arrays and almost impossible to DIY without xray inspection equipment and a reflow oven. You can get what you need for a few hundred $ on eBay…
The project I'm working on right now is with a FLIR tau 2 thermal camera. Our university got it donated but the only decent expansion board is 1400 euro so i figured I might use that budget to build my own. I basically just need to convert LVDS to mipi csi-2 or ethernet. You can find the LVDS spec on page 16 of this spec sheet https://www.flir.com/globalassets/imported-assets/document/f...
I need to make a board with the 50 pin hirose. Do you have any suggestions on getting started? I figured a qfp spartan 6 would be enough.
Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 i…
>The Zumwalt, F-35, B-2, and more are not cheap. You're right, they sure aren't. But as a result no other military force on earth besides NATO has the capability to launch air superiority fighters from amphibious assault ships, and perform multi-ton circumglobal bombing sorties. That kind of capability doesn't come cheap, and shouldn't be dismissed. Take away the B2 and we are fighting to-to-toe with Russian/Chinese…
I don't disagree with your post, but you shouldn't use the Zumwalt class as an example because the US has decided to stop production of it after 3 ships. For a citation see the bottom of the section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer#Backgr...