I worked for Ember for a while which was a startup that produced a ZigBee chip. It'll be hard to target cutting edge nodes but it can work. I left when they were eventually bought by Silicon Labs.
Ask HN: Chip startups?
41–50 of 75 posts
Re: Ask HN: Chip startups?
#42Likely vaporware at this point, but no discussion of chip startups is complete without mentioning Mill Computing: https://millcomputing.com/ It would represent a true architectural revolution if it ever actually came to fruition. Lots of past discussion on HackerNews over the decade(!) it’s been under development.
I guess they're technically a startup, but people working part time together for equity with no outside capital isn't what what we normally mean by the word.
Re: Ask HN: Chip startups?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
OT don't use contractions "there're" at the end of a sentence, use "there are." Yesterday I saw a subtitle that did the same thing, very confusing.
What does "OT" mean?
"Off topic".
It's a bit ironic that someone complaining about confusing contractions is using confusing abbreviations.
Re: Ask HN: Chip startups?
#44Re: Ask HN: Chip startups?
#45For anyone interested in Ethernet PHYs, we are hiring!
IPO'd early 2022, fast growing, and still a start-up environment
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3108025120/?refId=iI7RO%2...
Re: Ask HN: Chip startups?
#46> I think this falls in the 'sounds like a bad idea' bucket With enough funding, it's quite a good thing to work on. With Moore's law dead, the odds of success of weird chips got much better.
> With Moore's law dead Jim Keller: Moore’s Law is Not Dead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIG9ztQw2Gc
I'm not watching a 1 hour video, sorry.
I've jumped around it and didn't see any mention of cost/transistor going down. So I assume that isn't a respected engineer saying the opposite of what all the data clearly shows, and instead it's a hyped title to a talk about something slightly different.
Re: Ask HN: Chip startups?
#47I work for one now, it's very challenging * very cash heavy(EDA tools, IP license, engineer wage, fab money,etc) * very challenging technically(balance of computation, power, size,etc) * lots of work needed on the software side(compiler,SDK,optimized libs,etc) It is in a totally different world comparing to MVP or the lean startup concept. Hardware(circuit board related) startup is already challenging(cash heavy, log…
I mostly agree except that I'm not sure I'd say its very challenging technically. The logical design itself that I've seen is mostly extremely simple, just extensive. Verif is a bit fiddly but not really that hard, compared to e.g. writing a compiler or automating GUI testing. I don't know anything about physical design though; maybe that's really hard? I 100% agree with your other points though. It costs an absolute…
> There are a lot of luddites.
In chip design, there are a lot of non-software people who have been burned by software people. Given the amounts of money flying around, there are always a lot of charlatans looking to take a chunk out of you.
We used to do CI--a complete CI on our chip took 4 days. The library took 3 weeks to go through CI. Version control sucks unless your data is text--generally that's only your Verilog. Tcl is a decent enough language--the problem is that the stuff you write is no more than a one off and the real product is your chip--so nobody is going to reward you for a "good" script in any language. SystemVerilog wasn't meant to be a good language--it's an EDA vendor lockin meant to extract maximal money from hardware people.
And I've seen more verification in hardware before shipping a product than I EVER have seen in any software role. Yes, even those with "good" testing.
Re: Ask HN: Chip startups?
#48I can think of SiFive and Tenstorrent
Re: Ask HN: Chip startups?
#49I work for one now, it's very challenging * very cash heavy(EDA tools, IP license, engineer wage, fab money,etc) * very challenging technically(balance of computation, power, size,etc) * lots of work needed on the software side(compiler,SDK,optimized libs,etc) It is in a totally different world comparing to MVP or the lean startup concept. Hardware(circuit board related) startup is already challenging(cash heavy, log…
I mostly agree except that I'm not sure I'd say its very challenging technically. The logical design itself that I've seen is mostly extremely simple, just extensive. Verif is a bit fiddly but not really that hard, compared to e.g. writing a compiler or automating GUI testing. I don't know anything about physical design though; maybe that's really hard? I 100% agree with your other points though. It costs an absolute…
> Maybe it's different elsewhere but I was amazed how much convincing I had to do to get people to adopt practices that are just taken for granted in the software world, like auto-formatters.
Tell me more about this place where people don't get hung up on how I indent my comments.
Re: Ask HN: Chip startups?
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mostly agree except that I'm not sure I'd say its very challenging technically. The logical design itself that I've seen is mostly extremely simple, just extensive. Verif is a bit fiddly but not really that hard, compared to e.g. writing a compiler or automating GUI testing. I don't know anything about physical design though; maybe that's really hard? I 100% agree with your other points though. It costs an absolute…
> There are a lot of luddites. In chip design, there are a lot of non-software people who have been burned by software people. Given the amounts of money flying around, there are always a lot of charlatans looking to take a chunk out of you. We used to do CI--a complete CI on our chip took 4 days . The library took 3 weeks to go through CI. Version control sucks unless your data is text--generally that's only your Ve…
A sim run for a few of my customers with very basic chips might take 48-72 hours on a crazy fast machine. The designers are also SUPER concerned with getting everything right--with chip design there's no 'fixing' broken parts. If you don't get the design right when it goes to the fab, that entire run is ruined. Millions of dollars and at the bare minimum months of set back. It could kill the project or even the company.