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Governments do, if they work on bombs. Or spying. Or on figuring out the other guy's bombs.
Do you have a source for this? Spying sounds like a pretty interesting job if you can make something similar to FANG.
I've followed this project for a while. And while it truly is an impressive feat, I just wonder how did he afford all this equipment. I'm 24 and a physics PhD student, and just afforded my first soldering iron. I lack the space, let alone the equipment to attempt anything close to this. What a lucky, talented guy!
>I just wonder how did he afford all this equipment. Living in the US comes with certain advantages like some of the lowest consumer prices in the West including HW equipment being dirt cheap on the second hand market plus houses being big enough for space for such hobbies along with the biggest take home pays yielding some of the highest purchasing power in the West, a formula tough to replicate anywhere else. At le…
In the UK the second hand market is non-existent with the likes of the US. You can't just pick up hardware off Craiglist for next to nothing. It simply doesn't happen
Space is another thing as well. But I'm sure there's plenty of Americans whole live more urban without such space as well.
My future prospects may be promising, but owning a large garage to tinker in, whether electronics or something like woodworking seems like an untenable goal.
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Copyright might be a problem.
Thats an interesting comment. IANAL but The patent, how you’d typically protect the chips, have long expired. But the chip could have been protected as a work of art under copyright. However that would cover only a very similar layout of the transistors. Functionally identical chips wouldn't be covered even if they weren’t re-created from scratch. Didnt Nintendo do something similar with the MOS6502?
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His videos are an excellent educational resource that everyone can access easily. He's following that style (e.g. Applied Science) that is valuable for others wanting to learning how to build technologies without all of the fake complexity and grandstanding/secrecy that can sometimes accompany it. Nothing wrong with that!
"One of Zeloof’s best finds was a broken electron microscope that cost $250,000 in the early ’90s; he bought it for $1,000 and repaired it."
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Thats an interesting comment. IANAL but The patent, how you’d typically protect the chips, have long expired. But the chip could have been protected as a work of art under copyright. However that would cover only a very similar layout of the transistors. Functionally identical chips wouldn't be covered even if they weren’t re-created from scratch. Didnt Nintendo do something similar with the MOS6502?
Nintendo partnered with Ricoh to put a Z80 in the NES, like Coleco and Sega, but Ricoh didn’t have the license to produce Z80s and didn’t think they would be able to reverse engineer it quickly enough. But they did have a reverse-engineered 6502 clone with the patented bits removed, and US copyright law didn’t cover IC lithography yet, and would they be interested in that instead?
Either way, change the lithography keeping the chip electrically the same and you’re good to go
Amazing! "Zeloof says he doesn’t know for sure what he wants to do after graduating this spring" - I hope we don't hear later that he went to work for FAANG. One the saddest things about Big Tech is how they take young talent away from innovative, potentially competing enterprises and into busy work internal projects just because they can.
It's hard to compete with FAANG, Finance, and Consulting. Unfortunately, that's where a lot of people end up.
Registration wall. Does the article say what he does with HF? Ive often thought home brew chip making at 70s scale would just be a lot of elbow grease, but definitely doable. Safety is not that hard. Chemicals not that bad. Nothing that American garage tinkerers haven't dealt with before (my favorite, tin can turbine) Except for the HF. Ill admit I dont know much about HF, I used it only once in a lab (making BJTs) b…
AFAIK the chip industry uses flourides too (buffered oxide etch) because unbuffered HF has a too unpredictable etch rate.
Registration wall. Does the article say what he does with HF? Ive often thought home brew chip making at 70s scale would just be a lot of elbow grease, but definitely doable. Safety is not that hard. Chemicals not that bad. Nothing that American garage tinkerers haven't dealt with before (my favorite, tin can turbine) Except for the HF. Ill admit I dont know much about HF, I used it only once in a lab (making BJTs) b…
There's a line between "demands respect and thought during handling" and "reckless/insane". Having a properly ventilated workspace, and knowing how to handle dangerous chemicals, I would say HF is dangerous but not insane. Borderline insane for a hobbyist would be things like generating primary explosives/peroxides or toxic gases: cyanides, phosphines, hydrogen sulfide, ketene. I worked as a lab chemist for years and even with a decent home lab, I would be loathe to do any experiments which generates toxic gases in anything greater than 100's of mg quantity, because discharging your vent hood becomes a big concern. I've heard stories where someone accidentally acidified some cyanide (in a hood) and it killed a bunch of pigeons on the roof.
HF, eh, that's fume hood and PPE territory. Neutralize with calcium hydroxide, evaporate it in a hood to salt, and dispose as you would other solid chemical waste. It's just fluorite mineral at that point.
Amazing! "Zeloof says he doesn’t know for sure what he wants to do after graduating this spring" - I hope we don't hear later that he went to work for FAANG. One the saddest things about Big Tech is how they take young talent away from innovative, potentially competing enterprises and into busy work internal projects just because they can.
This line of thought is absurd. We have no idea where this individual wants to work, and we're here tearing apart a hypothetical job choice.
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At least in the US, they're generally limited to salaries on the "general schedule", and management gets paid more than technical people, because "it wouldn't be fair" to have subordinates that make more than you. So there's a built-in glass ceiling for tech careers. https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
Maybe “it’s not fair to have subordinates earn more” was the justification given to you, but businesses rarely make decisions based on what’s fair. Engineers are valuable, but individual engineers are largely replaceable. Being able to coordinate a large group successfully also has a lot of value.
As the person senior leadership communicates with this person is seen as more important than they are. Senior leadership wants to maintain a leveling system to separate groups of people. It's a hedge a flat organization which makes senior leadership less important.
You could swap out this person with another without losing speed but it doesn't work as well with an engineer.