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Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

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Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#101

Post by mips_avatar »

slededit wrote: post #73
civilitty wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You don't need XRay and your reflow oven can be a toaster oven. I do recommend a cheap microscope and a good pair of tweezers though. With this you can do 0.5mm pitch BGA although that is pushing it. I've made hundreds of prototypes this way. The fear of BGA parts is seriously overblown. The only real expensive part is the finer pitch parts will require tighter tolerances on the PCB which will take you out of the PCB…

Someone told me a spartan 6 might be enough for what I need, will qfp make my life easier?

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#102

Post by GW150914 »

aphextron wrote: post #98
vkou wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

Its about spheres of influence. If I can effectively project my will upon the (non-nuclearized) world more effectively than anyone else, my power increases substantially. Its 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.

What world peace? The US has started two wars that destabilized a whole region, and it shows no sign of restoring anything like peace there. World peace from such a belligerent nation, one that drone strikes most days of the week, is a bad joke or a real example of Orwell in action. How many pointless losing wars does the US need to start, how many governments does it need to overthrow only to see them revert to something even worse before you get that you’re about world peace.

You are not “the good guys.” The US is just in it for money, and that money only for a fraction of its population. It’s just a good thing the US can’t actually win a war it starts, or they’d have taken over by now. What’s actually happened is the likes of North Korea looked at what happened to Libya and Iraq and realized that they needed nuclear weapons. What a great outcome for “world peace” right? I’m sure those nuts won’t sell the technology, and other countries won’t follow suit so as not be “projected” all over.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#103

Post by mips_avatar »

jimmyswimmy wrote: post #78
slededit wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need XRay and your reflow oven can be a toaster oven. I do recommend a cheap microscope and a good pair of tweezers though. With this you can do 0.5mm pitch BGA although that is pushing it. I've made hundreds of prototypes this way. The fear of BGA parts is seriously overblown. The only real expensive part is the finer pitch parts will require tighter tolerances on the PCB which will take you out of the PCB…

Agreed, if you meant a toaster oven. It does take precise temperature control if you want any chance at reliability. And a fine touch. It's easy to line the whole thing up one row off and have to scrap the part, which is a bummer if you can't re ball it.

If i have never reflowed a pcb before, how should i learn?

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#104

Post by mokus »

Fomite wrote: post #50
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.

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

Serious question: how much of that cost is because we don’t have to fire them more?

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#105

Post by tryptophan »

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…

I wonder how a system would turn out in which all electronics/software are forced to have both their diagrams/schematics and code published, but in exchange this is copyrighted for like ~7 years or so.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#106

Post by slededit »

mips_avatar wrote: post #101
slededit wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need XRay and your reflow oven can be a toaster oven. I do recommend a cheap microscope and a good pair of tweezers though. With this you can do 0.5mm pitch BGA although that is pushing it. I've made hundreds of prototypes this way. The fear of BGA parts is seriously overblown. The only real expensive part is the finer pitch parts will require tighter tolerances on the PCB which will take you out of the PCB…

Someone told me a spartan 6 might be enough for what I need, will qfp make my life easier?

I personally find them more annoying than just BGA. But conventional wisdom is they are easier since technically you can solder them with a soldering iron and eventually you'll get lucky and remove the last solder bridge without creating a new one.

The trick with BGA parts is to use solder paste and a stencil. Once you try it you will never go back. By the way make sure you read the xilinx documents extremely carefully. Its easy to forget to wire PUDC_B and prevent the thing from ever being programmed. There are lots of little gotchas.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#108

Post by stn8188 »

WalterBright wrote: post #77
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…

I designed the ABEL language back in the 80's for compiling designs targeted at programmable logic arrays and gate arrays. It was very successful, but it died after a decade or so. It'd probably be around today and up to date if it was open source. A shame it isn't. I don't even know who owns the rights to it these days, or if whoever owns it even knows they have the rights to it, due to spinoffs and mergers.

I believe there are some Lattice ispPAC parts that still use ABEL, at least on the back end of their GUI.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#109

Post by 0x00000000 »

rickycook wrote: post #97
cosmon0t wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Australian defense budget is 36 billion [1] with a GDP of 1.2 trillion. US defense budget is 600 billion with a GDP of 18 trillion. It is just about the exact same percent of GDP.

[1] https://www.pyneonline.com.au/media-centre/media-releases/a-...

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#110

Post by et2o »

ur-whale wrote: post #68
ThinkBeat wrote: post #51

I don't quite get the open source angle in the comments here. If I managed to get my grubby hands on a moderately modern computer, I can use all manner of open source software and I can create wonderful new software. The barrier of entry is fairly low in rich countries. If AMD open sourced all the design aspects of their chips, I would have to get a loan to build 100 million fab to have any practical manner to enjoy…

I believe you have it backwards: this is exactly why there is actually very little risk for the big guys to actually share their knowledge. The financial entry barrier for building a fab is so huge that what in heaven's name would intel lose if they published the RTL for - say - their integer division hardware to show and teach the whole world how it's done when real professionals take a stab at it? And if they're sc…

What are the EDA discussion boards? Curious to peruse.
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