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Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

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

#71

Post by MaxBarraclough »

fouc wrote: post #66

What are the chances that google will add their own hidden or proprietary circuitry to any open-source chips? They'll add all sorts of "Security" and "Tracking" features..

To a chip? Doesn't seem likely. Adding something like an Intel Management Engine is quite a task, and they'd look awful if they got caught trying it in secret. If they're just making the CPU, in isolation from the rest of the system, I imagine it would be just about impossible to do something like that.

As to whether such changes could be detected, given that the intended design is known, I'm not sure. Someone more knowledgeable than me might be able to comment on that.

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

#72

Post by novaRom »

rwmj wrote: post #63
novaRom wrote: post #57

Can someone please tell me how photo-masks are produced? I don't understand how can tiny features be printed at almost the same scale as a final structure? With a laser beam? Say, as an input you have a layer description (schematics) - how can you transfer it to a tiny scale so precisely to produce a mask?

Photographic reduction. The masks are much larger than the final chips. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Semiconductor_photom... (Actually AIUI in EUV photolithography you can't use transparent masks, but must use a kind of mirror with the pattern etched onto it.)

According to Wikipedia masks are only 4 times larger - it is still very tiny.

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

#73

Post by amelius »

leojfc wrote: post #53

Strategically, could this be part of a response to Apple silicon? Or put another way, Apple and Google are both responding to Intel/the market’s failure to innovate enough in idiosyncratic manner: - Apple treats lower layers as core, and brings everything in-house; - Google treats lower layers as a threat and tries to open-source and commodify them to undermine competitors. I don’t mean this free fabbing can compete…

Joel Spolsky calls this "Commoditizing your complement".

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

#74

Post by novaRom »

ArchD wrote: post #59
novaRom wrote: post #57

Can someone please tell me how photo-masks are produced? I don't understand how can tiny features be printed at almost the same scale as a final structure? With a laser beam? Say, as an input you have a layer description (schematics) - how can you transfer it to a tiny scale so precisely to produce a mask?

Lenses are used so the feature size on the mask is larger than the feature size on the wafer. https://www.nikon.com/about/technology/product/semiconductor...

Yes, but only few times. Still not clear how an initial mask has been produced? From file to mask - a kind of printer or a laser?

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

#75

Post by MayeulC »

ohazi wrote: post #37
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…

There are cheap-ish multi-project wafers (MPW).

These organizations typically also gives access to software design tools. But that's still a sizeable investment. Last project I've worked on used a (more expensive than usual I think) GloFo 22nm technology. Price was around €9k/mm², 9mm² was the minimum area. Still much more accessible to academia than individuals or open source projects, but not out of the realm of a crowdfunding campaign.

There are multiple chips that ought to be open source, broadly available, and cheap: AV1 decoders, small FPGAs, Wi-Fi or SDR chips, TMPs, and other crucial pieces for security, DIY/open HW projects, and basic computer building blocks. Most interesting to me are chips that would allow novel applications that commercial ventures would never look at, like open, hackable p2p WiFi meshes, or emulators-on-a-chip, or other application-specific coprocessors (protein folding, etc).

[1] ttps://mycmp.fr/technologies/process-catalog/

[2] https://europractice-ic.com/

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

#77

Post by pjc50 »

DCKing wrote: post #31

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 faste…

What happened to freescale/NXP "Coldfire"?

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

#78

Post by ric2b »

novaRom wrote: post #57

Can someone please tell me how photo-masks are produced? I don't understand how can tiny features be printed at almost the same scale as a final structure? With a laser beam? Say, as an input you have a layer description (schematics) - how can you transfer it to a tiny scale so precisely to produce a mask?

They aren't built at the same scale, they're much larger than the final structure and lenses are used to scale the image down to the desired size.

Here's a video form Intel on how they are made: https://youtu.be/u3ws0UebnSE

Apparently they use "electron beams", not sure what those are, they sound similar to lasers but with electrons, from this video: https://youtu.be/PWV9pvdRBNY

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

#79

Post by pjc50 »

fouc wrote: post #66

What are the chances that google will add their own hidden or proprietary circuitry to any open-source chips? They'll add all sorts of "Security" and "Tracking" features..

If you hand them GDSII then fiddling with it is very time-consuming and difficult, but can be spotted by looking at the resulting chip under a microscope.

(Not entirely simple at 130nm as this is shorter than the wavelength of visible light!)

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

#80

Post by MayeulC »

baybal2 wrote: post #44
pjc50 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

> 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. No, you actually have more leakage at older nodes, what changes is the ratio of current spent on leakage vs. current spent doing something useful.

Doesn't leakage increase again below 22nm because of tunneling losses, though?

Of course, the lower gate capacitance allows for lower switching losses. But adiabatic computing could theoretically recover switching losses, allowing for higher efficiency at older nodes. That can be approached by using an oscillating power supply for instance, to recover charges. If someone was to design something like this for this run, it could be very interesting.

Now I'm wondering if this isn't some covert recruitment operation by Google: they will likely comb trough application, select the most promising ones, and the designers will get job offers :)

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