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Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

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Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#121

Post by analognoise »

gascan wrote: post #83
detuur wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You couldn't be any more dead-on. EDA feels like Scientology, where with every level closer to the core you first need to invest half your life savings + a firstborn. I have an FPGA lying on my desk I can do barely anything interesting with because there are no open-source cores for even simple things like USB3.1 controllers or Thunderbolt or pretty much any interesting bus. Protocols are strongly guarded open secret…

because there are no open-source cores for even simple things like USB3.1 controllers or Thunderbolt Those are hardly that simple. There exist entire companies whose function is designing such cores (and licensing them).

Yeah I'm reading these comments and getting a good laugh.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#122

Post by tasty_freeze »

detuur wrote: post #75
ur-whale wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many NP complete problems where computer do vastly better than humans. But when it comes to EDA, the utterly closed-source culture of the industry has completely prevented what essentially amounts to a horde of smart people to work on the problem: no one - except a very small number insiders - even know what the problems are.

You couldn't be any more dead-on. EDA feels like Scientology, where with every level closer to the core you first need to invest half your life savings + a firstborn. I have an FPGA lying on my desk I can do barely anything interesting with because there are no open-source cores for even simple things like USB3.1 controllers or Thunderbolt or pretty much any interesting bus. Protocols are strongly guarded open secret…

USB 3.1 pushes data at 10Gbps. Do you have any idea how much black magic it takes to do that?

Try writing an FPGA SDRAM controller that reliably operates across frequency, voltage, and temperature at 150 MHz. It is doable but a challenge with the common xilinx boards that are sold to hobbyists for $80. If you can do that, then think about designing a circuit which operates 20 times faster, and negotiates a protocol which is 100 times more complex than what an SDRAM controller has to do.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#123

Post by Tade0 »

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.

It was very successful, but it died after a decade or so.

Perhaps not entirely. We had one lab session dedicated to it during my junior year in college. That was ten years ago but apparently they haven't changed that[0] (course description in english at the bottom of the page).

[0] http://studia.elka.pw.edu.pl/pl/18L/s/eres/eres/wwersje$.sta...

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#124

Post by techdragon »

mokus wrote: post #104
Fomite wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

WW2 is the only real example to answer this kind of question. For all the global skirmishes and regular war games and other exercises, since WW2 there really hasn’t been sufficient conflict to prevent manufacturing an ahead of time stockpile of desired weaponry at the prices set by companies in the military industrial complex. Price did come down in WW2 but it can be hard to attribute it specifically to “we used everything we built and wanted more delivered yesterday” when so many other factors are involved. Wartime rationing, production regulations, patriotic decision making affecting prices people charged the government, and the simplicity of the things being manufactured compared to the complexity of modern munitions.

At the end of the day I’ve personally settled on “yes but probably not as much as you might think”.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#125

Post by tasty_freeze »

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…

Nvidia did release an open source deep learning core: RTL, c models, regression tests.

http://nvdla.org/index.html

The source code is on github.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#126

Post by emeraldd »

usmannk wrote: post #120
makmanalp wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the backoffice engineers would make a build that fixed only those bugs Makes perfect business sense! Those customers didn't pay to get those bugs fixed, so why should they get the fixes??? /s Holy moly.

I think a reasonable explanation may be that other customers possibly have come to unknowingly rely on some of the bugs. Shipping a fix of all the bugs could actually break their code!

Or their hardware, some of the impact of those bugs could be built into the physical hardware. By that point.

Edit:fixed a typo.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#127

Post by stewartbutler »

slededit wrote: post #112
civilitty wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With this you can do 0.5mm pitch BGA although that is pushing it. If you have actually figured out how to consistently make boards with BGA-256/512 0.5mm pitch parts with just a toaster, I'd love to learn more about your technique. Even with professional inspection equipment and a pick and place, it's rarely worth the effort unless I have an imminent deadline. For a beginner, I doubt the cost of trial and error would…

I use a 10x jewelers microscope and tweezers to get the alignment perfect. The hardest part is actually applying the solder paste there is no room for registration errors. I triple check everything. As for the reflow profile I raise the temperature gradually, with the thermocouple taped directly to the PCB with kapton tape. I do this manually, not with an automatic controller. My toaster oven is a convection model wi…

If you have access to a laser cutter you can make a pretty decent solder stencil by folding some clear package tape (so all adhesive is on the inside) and having it cut out the hole pattern. Lay it down on the PCB, squeegee some solder paste over it like you would a real solder mask, and carefully peel the tape up.

Been a few years, but IIRC a labmate of mine got a few units of .5mm highish ball count to work using that process and a toaster oven, but it is a bitch to test.

Would maybe do for a hobby project assuming you have access the equipment (e.g. a hackerspace or something) and are willing to drop a buttload of time into trying to get it to work, but if you are working for someone it is probably more cost effective to save the manhours and get it done by someone with the right equipment.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#128

Post by drblast »

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.

Holy shit, around 2005/6 I took an EE class in programmable logic that used ABEL for the labs. I couldn't find any information on it anywhere and all we had to learn the language was an old single-page photocopy of an example that had been re-copied so many times it was barely readable. And the ends of the lines were cut off.

Needless to say, the ABEL projects were frustrating...indeed a shame that it's not open source.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#129

Post by extralego »

makmanalp wrote: post #113
civilitty wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the EDA industry, it's almost all of hardware including most of the embedded software people. Yeah, I get it - I too am sometimes stuck using some old proprietary compiler with a C standard older than some of the people I work with - but come on. On my last job I used a Qualcomm radio and they ended up giving me close to a thousand zip files of driver revisions going back a decade because their build pr…

> the backoffice engineers would make a build that fixed only those bugs Makes perfect business sense! Those customers didn't pay to get those bugs fixed, so why should they get the fixes??? /s Holy moly.

Seems very similar to how Restaurants and grocery stores throw food out instead of giving it to shelters and homeless people. It’s a common corporate policy in the US. The only justification seems to be that if they gave it away, they might miss out on some otherwise potential sales.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#130

Post by slededit »

stewartbutler wrote: post #127
slededit wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a 10x jewelers microscope and tweezers to get the alignment perfect. The hardest part is actually applying the solder paste there is no room for registration errors. I triple check everything. As for the reflow profile I raise the temperature gradually, with the thermocouple taped directly to the PCB with kapton tape. I do this manually, not with an automatic controller. My toaster oven is a convection model wi…

If you have access to a laser cutter you can make a pretty decent solder stencil by folding some clear package tape (so all adhesive is on the inside) and having it cut out the hole pattern. Lay it down on the PCB, squeegee some solder paste over it like you would a real solder mask, and carefully peel the tape up. Been a few years, but IIRC a labmate of mine got a few units of .5mm highish ball count to work using t…

Things have changed a lot. You can get proper stainless steel stencils from lots of providers now, most PCB houses have it available as well - done to the same specs as your PCB.

The only time it really fails is if I'm lazy applying the solder paste or if I stop paying attention during reflow. Doing it in house saves a ton of money which is really important when you are trying to get your first prototypes up and running. Plus it also keeps you deeply in tune with what is possible to manufacture and what isn't. DFM stops being just a checklist.

We'd have a lot more hardware startups if people realized how cheap and easy its become. You need the prototype to get funding.

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