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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

#231

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

kortex wrote: post #121
balsam wrote: post #64

Anybody has a good estimate of how much this kind of home fab can cost? I am trying to do this in my own apartment (its going very slowly heh) and I estimate it would be USD100000. USD10000 would be barely believable if I can get that broken electron microscope for the same price he did. ($1000). Seems like the vacuum system would be the most expensive part. Another one would be random consumables (vacuum grease, oil…

Depends tremendously on how good you are at scrounging. Assuming you have more time than money and know how to find fruitful sources (ebay is meh, local universities, local industry, electronics recylers, equipment auctions, and knowing a guy are the best ways to get cheap/free gear), you could probably do something like the z1 for a few grand. Sam's lab looks like it cost somewhere north of $10k, but south of $50k.…

I also think this is the answer. People are amazingly good at finding discarded things that were once high-value and fixing them. People are amazingly good at scrapping things that are only a little broken, too.

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

#232

Post by derac »

savant_penguin wrote: post #157
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…

omg he could make it a business to buy these microscopes, fix and resell for 100k each

Assuming there are a lot of cheap broken electron microscopes floating around.

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

#233

Post by csdvrx »

Symbiote wrote: post #117
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's easier to get the money if one has funding from parents or friends, after all most of this stuffs are dirty cheap (under $1K) and he has a whole garage to play around, but it's MUCH more difficult to learn the skills described in the article!

It's rather inconsiderate to refer to $1K as "dirt cheap" when replying to someone who says they can only just afford a soldering iron.

> It's rather inconsiderate to refer to $1K as "dirt cheap" when replying to someone who says they can only just afford a soldering iron

That's like 10 bucks on amazon? Skip 2 meals, or panhandle for 4 hours. Done - soldering iron.

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

#234

Post by esjeon »

jcims wrote: post #200

Story about a young person kicking ass and half the comments in here are from yeahbutters. Wordcloud - https://imgur.com/zeagyNf

Kicking ass is one thing, clearly it's an expensive hobby to following through the chipmaking history. The dedication is impressive, but, as long as his hobby doesn't affect the current paradigm, he's not kicking ass, but just a micro-celebrity on YT with expensive hobby + flexing.

Note that I wrote this comment, because I just don't like blind positivity. Money is really a problem. There were people who talked about home-made chips for a long time, but the no.1 issue had always been money. Optics and lithography is nothing new, and it just takes a lot of time, effort, and tons of money (+ opportunity cost) to find the right recipe that is reproducible.

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

#235

Post by rendall »

jcims wrote: post #200

Story about a young person kicking ass and half the comments in here are from yeahbutters. Wordcloud - https://imgur.com/zeagyNf

People here are really focused on the question of his family wealth, but it's such a distraction. Even were they extravagantly wealthy, it is an astonishing accomplishment for anyone, never mind a high-school student / college undergrad.

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

#237

Post by quickthrower2 »

JohnBooty wrote: post #167
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The other factor is access to youtube to find likeminded people and have things explained and see what is possible. When I was young I loved computers but even install Linux or learn machine code seemed like this impenetrable world that was “for adults”. I think the modern internet is great for people sharing knowhow.

That said this man is a genius!

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

#238

Post by emadabdulrahim »

neogodless wrote: post #32

I think one of the great takeaways is his quote: > Maybe it’s overconfidence, but I have a mentality that another human figured it out, so I can too, even if maybe it takes me longer Sometimes I explain what I do in software. "There is no magic. I don't like when there is magic. Some people do but it leaves me feeling unsure about what my code will do. Instead I tend to work very slowly at first, seeing what each lit…

This is something I've struggled with my whole life and still do to this day.

I've had one of the worst educations, considering Egypt is at the bottom of the barrel for it's schooling system. So by the age of 25, I realize I haven't learned anything substantial.

I've managed to escape that somehow and now been working at high growth companies as a Deisnger and SW developer in SF.

Yet, because I'm basically self-taught and don't have good foundation in many topics such as Math, Compilers, and other important topics, I find myself extremely intimidated to approach such fields. For one, I realize I'll need to invest a lot of time to grasp them. Second, I get this feeling of anxiety that I'll never be able to get to the level I wish to be. Anxiety that can sometimes reach the level of a panic attack.

It sounds dramatic and maybe even pathetic to admit that about myself, but I'm still trying to figure out how to not get so worked up about that stuff when I'm learning and feeling hopelessly stuck to fully understand something.

Needless to say, I have a lot of work to do on myself.

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

#239

Post by danielrpa »

fortran77 wrote: post #99
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.

Translation: "I don't (or can't) work for a FAANG, so this kid shouldn't either." 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.

I am the parent and I work at a FAANG now. But I did have a company right out of college (which failed).

FAANG now is a means for saving for my next enterprise, which hopefully will happen very soon.

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

#240

Post by ipaddr »

resueman wrote: post #227
ipaddr wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest. Engineer managers are largely replacable and more easily than individual engineers. The pool is larger and can accept more manager unrelated experience. There is more to this. 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 m…

I hate to say it, but I can imagine that a group of engineres with a manager nipping at the heels can be much more valuable in total to a company than a group of engineers left to their own devices. Some may be great at being independently productive but most probably are not. Of course some random idiot nagging the engineers won't be worth much, they need to be experts at the specific business and domain to bring va…

The project manager has the nudging role and the best insight on deliveriables. A manager usually manages other administration aspects and inspirational at times.
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