Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

fossi-foundation.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 404 posts

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#31

Post by DCKing »

From a hobbyist and preservation perspective, it would be cool if this could be used to produce some form of the Apollo 68080 core to revive the 68k architecture a little bit, and build out the Debian m68k port [0][1]. The last "big" 68k chips were produced in 1995 (that would be a 350nm process?) so this could be hugely improved on 130nm. The 68080 core is currently implemented in FPGAs only and is already the fastest 68k hardware out there. With a real chip, people could continue upgrading their Amigas and Ataris.

[0]: http://www.apollo-core.com/ I can't easily find how "open source" it is though, but it's free to download.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23668057

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#32

Post by amiga-workbench »

dTal wrote: post #25

Can anyone venture a guess as to why Google might be doing this? What's the incentive structure here?

I know Google absolutely loathes having Intel silicon in their datacenters, the management engine and other blobs can't be audited. It's conceivable they want to help bring open chips to market to try and remedy this problem.

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#33

Post by navanchauhan »

riffraff wrote: post #27
navanchauhan wrote: post #24

Can I in theory build one optimised for running one program? Will it be of any benefit?

yes, but it depends on the program, that's what the whole ASIC industry for bitcoin mining is.

I was thinking about AutoDock Vina ( Molecular Docking Software ), I have literally 0 knowledege about hardware :(

Then again, this is going to be a really fun experience

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#34

Post by Koffiepoeder »

dTal wrote: post #25

Can anyone venture a guess as to why Google might be doing this? What's the incentive structure here?

The market of skilled hardware designers is running low: training costs are high, complexity has skyrocketted. By doing this they can increase attention to a field that is otherwise dominated by big corporates (already somewhat the case). The only way to have a sane and healthy chip market is to make 1) the entry barrier low and 2) stimulate innovation. This does both of that.

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#35

Post by pjc50 »

why_only_15 wrote: post #8

How much has the power efficiency improved between 130nm and 7nm? Is it plausible to get better performance/watt for a custom chip on 130nm vs a software application running on a 7m chip? I get that hardware has other benefits but just wondering for accelerators where the cost/benefit starts to make sense.

> Is it plausible to get better performance/watt for a custom chip on 130nm vs a software application running on a 7m chip?

This very, very much depends on what the algorithm is (integer or FP? how data dependent?), but I would say no for almost all interesting cases.

The only exception would be if you're doing a "mixed signal" chip where some of the processing is inherently analogue and you can save power compared to having to do it with a group of separate chips.

Another exception might be low leakage construction, because that gets worse as the process gets smaller. This is only valuable if your chip is off almost all of the time and you want to squeeze down exactly how many nanoamps "off" actually consumes.

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#37

Post by ohazi »

tdonovic wrote: post #4

That sounds pretty huge. I've never seen on Hackaday or similar people getting small runs of chip fabbed. What are the broader implications of this? Will other fabs start to lower the barrier to production as well?

You generally don't do small runs of chips, unless cost is no object. The NRE costs of getting the masks made, even on older processes like these are still comfortably in the $X00,000 range, blowing past $1 million pretty quickly if you need a process that isn't ancient. That's without design software licenses, which can be hundreds of thousands more.

So the minimum order quantity usually needs to be at least in the tens to hundreds of thousands of chips if you don't want each chip to be a sizeable chunk of that initial cost.

It would be really nice to get to the point where small batch chips were viable though. One aspect is cost -- if they could get the NRE cost down to, say, $20k - $50k, and the software licensing cost down to zero, that would open up a lot of options.

The other aspect is the "dark art" nature of the process kit and communicating with the fab. If everybody assumes that chip design is expensive, they're going to be reluctant to even talk to the fab to see what options are available. If they see a bunch of people building interesting things with this shuttle program, then all of a sudden the fab is going to see more business interest as people try to figure out if there's a way to make their project work.

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#38

Post by walrus01 »

DCKing wrote: post #20
jcun4128 wrote: post #2

How "bad" is that compared to standard/common 14nm, etc...

130nm was used to make the Athlon XP, Athlon 64, Pentium M, Pentium 4 and PowerPC G5 in the 2001-2003 timeframe [0]. So at the peak of 130nm's performance spectrum, it was able to produce stuff that can still run 2020 software quite okay. The Athlon 64 is probably the best 130nm silicon produced in its heyday and it's in the ballpark of a Raspberry Pi 4 (which has a 28nm SoC) in single core benchmarks. I don't think…

As I recall from that generation, also the first models of AMD opterons, commonly built into dual socket motherboards. For the time they were very speed competitive with the Intel option.

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#39

Post by novaRom »

Koffiepoeder wrote: post #34
dTal wrote: post #25

Can anyone venture a guess as to why Google might be doing this? What's the incentive structure here?

The market of skilled hardware designers is running low: training costs are high, complexity has skyrocketted. By doing this they can increase attention to a field that is otherwise dominated by big corporates (already somewhat the case). The only way to have a sane and healthy chip market is to make 1) the entry barrier low and 2) stimulate innovation. This does both of that.

Another point is that silicon-related tech is currently leaving US and begins booming in China.

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#40

Post by fhssn1 »

est31 wrote: post #6

This is amazing. I think the main reason why open source has taken off is because access to a computer is available to many people, and as cost is negligible, it only required free time and enough dedication + skill to be successful. For hardware though, each compile/edit/run cycle costs money, software often has 5-digit per seat licenses, and thus the number of people with enough resources to pursue this as a hobby…

I believe you're talking about the EDA toolchain.

Even though it has a long history of open-source attempts, as pointed out by Tim in his presentation, they are few and far between, and massively underwhelming compared to the thriving open source software community.

However, if this initiative takes off, it'll be a big help in creating an open source EDA toolchain community.

Post reply on HN