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22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

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Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#161

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

ezconnect wrote: post #159
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #106

I'm more interested how he managed to master the knowledge of chip manufacturing plus a ton of electronics repairs (see his microscope and other equipment) at such an early age. Very admirable. Look at what he did: > Photolithography machines are expensive—up to $150 million—and so Zeloof made his own by bolting a modified conference room projector bought on Amazon onto a microscope. It projects his designs at tiny s…

He has support from his family.

For sure, but I bet not all kids with support from their family do cool things. Or put it in the other way, you have to prove yourself worthy before getting any fund (even from parents).

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#162

Post by nobodyandproud »

danielrpa wrote: post #10

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.

If he sets up a franchise business to open-up custom chip hardware manufacturing; that would be amazing.

The US military alone I feel needs this sort of redundancy; not to mention the freedom we need from closed-source hardware.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#164

Post by at_compile_time »

hiptobecubic wrote: post #127
fartcannon wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money being required to live a normal life is the problem. A Star Trek style cashless society would allow people to live their life as they see fit, and would undoubtedly unlock a huge jump in human ingenuity. But I don't think we are evolved enough to deal yet. We'd just end up in a communist prison life or something as people selfishly try to get more for themselves. Roddenberry thought an event like finding ex…

One thing I never understood is that star fleet and the federation are somehow post-scarcity utopias, but you still have "gold-plated latinum" driving a huge underground criminal counter-culture. What's the point? The ferenghi should be having a cultural existential crisis, but instead they are happy just charging people for drinks that can be replicated freely.

You don't understand because it doesn't make sense. It's just fun sci-fi storytelling.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#165

Post by JohnBooty »

was_a_dev wrote: post #92
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I think living in the US must have some effect. 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, whet…

We definitely have it easier here in America with regards to available space and the price of used equipment, though I'd note that this kid's situation isn't typical.

I grew up middle-class (my dad made, statistically, pretty much the median household income) and out of the scores of kids I knew, perhaps one of them might've had the parental and financial resources to do something like this, had he had the skill/intelligence/inclination.

We had a tiny garage, barely enough to fit a small car. Of course, there was no room for a car, because we needed to keep the yard tools and such in there.

I'm laughing -- trying to imagine my dad's reaction, had I asked him if I could build a science lab in there instead. "Sorry dad, the lawn mower's got to go somewhere else now" lol. He would have told me to go fuck myself.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#167

Post by JohnBooty »

hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #161
ezconnect wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has support from his family.

For sure, but I bet not all kids with support from their family do cool things. Or put it in the other way, you have to prove yourself worthy before getting any fund (even from parents).

Yeah, absolutely. I think the best way to understand this kid is that he is definitely at the intersection of privilege and talent.

That is not to take anything away from his achievements. This kid's kicking ass.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#168

Post by Yenrabbit »

jacquesm wrote: post #6

Heh, I'll bet the makers of Photoshop never saw this usecase of their software coming. What a great project. The registration headaches must be considerable, he needs to re-place the die in exactly the same spot for every pass of exposure.

I believe he can use the microscope to visually position the die right where it needs to be. It's a very clever setup!

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#169

Post by carapace »

phkahler wrote: post #81

Whenever this comes up I like to say it would be nice to reinvent small scale chip fab with less toxic materials if possible.

FWIW, depending on your applications, other modalities might be easier: fluidics or even clockwork logic. You'll never be as efficient and fast as silicon, of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconventional_computing

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#170

Post by halpert »

hiptobecubic wrote: post #130
halpert wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why don’t companies adopt a flatter structure with higher compensated engineers? The goal of a company is to make money after all. If management could be removed and top engineers retained with higher salaries, then a company would surely have an advantage in the marketplace. Since this doesn’t happen, there must be more to the picture than people in upper management simply clinging to their jobs. If removing mi…

I would be careful with the "if they do it it must be sensible" reasoning. There are a lot of reasons that modeling firms using homo-economicus and perfect markets doesn't pan out.

To me, this is a case to apply Occam’s razor. What is more likely, that this decades old, Dilbertesque criticism of management is true, yet somehow eluded the purview of shareholders? Or that businesses are being run in a relatively efficient manner given the current human condition?
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