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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

#171

Post by timerol »

TFA doesn't really summarize what's available very well, so let me take a shot from a technical perspective:

- 130 nm process built with Skywater foundry - Skywater Platform Development Kit (PDK) is currently digital-only - 40 projects will be selected for fabrication - 10 mm^2 area available per-project - Will use a standard harness with a RISC-V core and RAM - Each project will get back ~100 ICs - All projects must be open source via Git - Verilog and gate-level layout

I'm curious to see how aggresive designs get with analog components, given that they can be laid out in the GDS, but the PDK doesn't support it yet.

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

#172

Post by hamandcheese »

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…

Very similar to what you just said, I suspect that a driving factor in the state of open source in hardware is that anyone working in hardware almost be definition has a large corporate backing, since producing hardware is so capital intensive (compared to software).

If that is basically a given, why publish anything for free, when you can instead charge 10k/seat in licensing?

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

#173

Post by lokl »

Could this be suitable for a camera sensor? I don't know anything about hardware, but I am intrigued by the idea of exploring new camera sensor ideas.

Edit: Nevermind, another comment says 10 mm^2 per project. That's probably too small for the type of camera sensor I have in mind.

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

#174

Post by cottonseed »

ajb wrote: post #154

So, this doesn't appear to have been announced by google. It does seem to be real but the OP may be jumping the gun a bit. The authoritative source seems to be the slides of this guy at google: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRtwZPc8ykkk... From the slides this is "current plans, subject to change". This is an 'open source shuttle process'. Shuttle processes are a relatively cheap way of making small…

Maybe watch the talk first before commenting? All these questions are answered in the talk.

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

#175

Post by mobilefriendly »

chii wrote: post #163
Taek wrote: post #151

I've spent some time in the chip industry. It is awful, backwards, and super far behind. I didn't appreciate the full power of open source until I saw an industry that operates without it. Want a linter for your project? That's going to be $50k. Also, it's an absolutely terrible linter by software standards. In software, linters combine the best ideas from thousands of engineers across dozens of companies building on…

> Want a linter for your project? That's going to be $50k. the thing is that i think the open source software is a miracle that it even exists, and i don't find it strange that nowhere else has replicated the success. Because open source, at heart, is quite altruistic.

It actually took a lot of hard work in the early days, to prove the model as valid and also defend the legal code and rights that underpin FOSS.

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

#176

Post by ddevault »

chii wrote: post #163
Taek wrote: post #151

I've spent some time in the chip industry. It is awful, backwards, and super far behind. I didn't appreciate the full power of open source until I saw an industry that operates without it. Want a linter for your project? That's going to be $50k. Also, it's an absolutely terrible linter by software standards. In software, linters combine the best ideas from thousands of engineers across dozens of companies building on…

> Want a linter for your project? That's going to be $50k. the thing is that i think the open source software is a miracle that it even exists, and i don't find it strange that nowhere else has replicated the success. Because open source, at heart, is quite altruistic.

This isn't true. Writing open source software is more profitable: it's cheaper (because everyone works on it) and works better (because everyone works on it).

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

#177

Post by dwild »

kingosticks wrote: post #149

> All open source chip designs qualify, no further strings attached! Surely they have some threshold requirements that the thing actually works? How is this going to work? I mean, if there's no investment required from me, what's the incentive for me to verify my design properly? What's the point in them fabbing a load of fatally bugged open-source designs?

I'm pretty sure they'll expect a tiny bit of QA over an FPGA before fabbing them.

I don't think they care much about what comes out of it though, whether it's "bugged open-source designs" or not, for sure they want less of the bugged one, but the end-goal isn't the projects, it's the people behind theses projects. Google wants more people that design chips, and then recruit them. This just goes on recruitment cost. They may be interested in the open source part of it, but as soon as they'll stop paying for it (and I'm pretty sure it's not going to stay for long, they mention up to 2021), the state of open source chip design will come back to the current status.

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

#178

Post by BoysenberryPi »

ddevault wrote: post #176
chii wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Want a linter for your project? That's going to be $50k. the thing is that i think the open source software is a miracle that it even exists, and i don't find it strange that nowhere else has replicated the success. Because open source, at heart, is quite altruistic.

This isn't true. Writing open source software is more profitable: it's cheaper (because everyone works on it) and works better (because everyone works on it).

Do you have data to back this up? Because all accounts I've heard say that it's incredibly difficult to make money in open source.

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

#179

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

awelkie wrote: post #67
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…

An open source WiFi chip would be super cool. I wonder how easy it would be to take the FPGA code from openwifi[0] and combine it with a radio on the same chip? [0] https://github.com/open-sdr/openwifi

Even if you could technically make it work, I'd be very nervous around the legalities of that. Or is the Wi-Fi spectrum so unregulated that you can run without any certification at all?

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

#180

Post by ddevault »

BoysenberryPi wrote: post #178
ddevault wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. Writing open source software is more profitable: it's cheaper (because everyone works on it) and works better (because everyone works on it).

Do you have data to back this up? Because all accounts I've heard say that it's incredibly difficult to make money in open source.

Making money only writing open source is possible, but complicated and out of scope for this comment.

But writing some open source - making your tools (compilers, linters, runtimes), libraries, frameworks, monitoring, sysops/sysadmin tooling, and so on open source is much more profitable, and that's a huge subdomain of open source out there right now.

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