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22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

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Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#151

Post by acheron »

tjrgergw wrote: post #135
trimethylpurine wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a suburb. Not an expensive one. Downtown is a 20 minute drive in light traffic. Within a 10 minute walk there are office buildings, grocery stores, shopping mall, gyms, parks, hiking and biking trails, etc. There are many cities to choose from; some are better planned than others. Based on your comment I would guess that you've opted to live in one of the "cool" cities in America.

Would you please share which city is this, that has everything within 10 minute walk in its suburbs? I'm a European who's lived in an "American downtown" because I was told the suburbs are horrible, but what you're describing sounds great.

> because I was told the suburbs are horrible

Probably shouldn’t be taking advice from Reddit.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#152

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #101
EliRivers wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that thread, his garage is larger than the entire space I rented for living in when I was his age. But the point I'm going on to make isn't just about how stupid the cost of housing is; it's that the high cost of housing comes with extra costs that we might not even see. How many people would be doing all sorts of neat things, some of which would genuinely bloom into real advances and ideas and genuine new wealth…

If you want to compromise on neither location nor space, your only real option is to build upwards. Tall residential skyscrapers are the only way. Personally I'm fine with that, but I get why people might have an aesthetic issue with it. They're of course allowed to compromise on one of the other 2 points to get a better looking neighborhood if they want.

I'd love to put a CNC mill there, but my apartment building doesn't let me use my parking space for anything except a car, unfortunately. I think that is quite common. :(

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#153

Post by dahart »

vasco wrote: post #94
Gud wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most would be, but that 0.01% are the ones pushing humanity forward. Let's figure out how to give them the resources. And how do you know most/many people aren't spending their times scrolling tiktok because they don't have the resources to do something more worthwhile?

> And how do you know most/many people aren't spending their times scrolling tiktok because they don't have the resources to do something more worthwhile? Because if that was it, most rich people, rich kids would be all doing crazy science experiments and advancing knowledge. But turns out they don't.

You have a source for that claim? Patents are absolutely dominated by people with PhDs, which is highly correlated with family income.

https://www.hamiltonproject.org/publication/economic-fact/el...

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#154

Post by xw3098 »

dogma1138 wrote: post #115
sadhorse wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite hard to grasp what they are really trying to achieve there. They are building what kind of tools, and for whom?

Semi is the next big thing in distributed manufacturing you already have companies that offer what is essentially ride sharing for semiconductors they manufacture single IC/SoC with multiple blocks on them and you essentially pay for a % of the floor plan which can operate independently from the rest. So whilst not quite garage ready we’re probably 2-5 years of you being able to order completely custom silicon form t…

For very basic cmos nodes 24 turn is possible. But for most advanced node the lead time is months because that’s the minimum manufacturing time.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/three-month...

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#155

Post by supportengineer »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #109
EliRivers wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that thread, his garage is larger than the entire space I rented for living in when I was his age. But the point I'm going on to make isn't just about how stupid the cost of housing is; it's that the high cost of housing comes with extra costs that we might not even see. How many people would be doing all sorts of neat things, some of which would genuinely bloom into real advances and ideas and genuine new wealth…

> if only they could afford some goddamn space in which to do it... It doesn't even have to be own space... just places like repair shops that let you hang around, maker/hacker spaces would go a long way. I learned / had so much fun just hanging out at "Radio"(/TV/Tape recorder) Repair shops when I was a kid. Of course most of things i built back there were silly things like lights for my bicycle, longer earphone wir…

That used to be in high schools and it was called “shop class”.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#156

Post by mikewarot »

xw3098 wrote: post #146
mikewarot wrote: post #75

I've been following home-made semiconductors since Jeri Ellsworth made her own NMOS FETs in 2010.[1] When Sam managed to make his own ICs, I was happy for him, and for the hobby. Now he seems to be on the verge of democratizing access to semiconductor production in very low volumes. I've got my own project to try out once I can get my hands on it.[2] Who knows, petaflop chips made in the garage could be right around…

You can have this now https://efabless.com/

I can't... you might be able to afford $10k, but right now, I had to think hard before spending $3 last night.

I hope to learn enough Verilog/VHDL/RTL to take advantage of the Free Shuttle program they have[1] eventually.

Currently, I'm wondering how to go from expressions to code I can load into a bitgrid. The thought of parsing code, building an AST, converting that to an acyclic directed graph of binary expressions, to actual bits to load the grid with.... overwhelms me, and has me putting it off. 8(

I do have a working simulator, written in Pascal[2], that can run fairly quickly for toy problems on my desktop PC. So, there's been some progress.

I strongly suspect I can get there, but need an accountability buddy to push me along. I used to be a self starter, but I stayed in an IT Admin job too long that crushed it out of me.

[1] https://efabless.com/open_shuttle_program

[2] https://github.com/mikewarot/Bitgrid

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#157

Post by carom »

tjrgergw wrote: post #135
trimethylpurine wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a suburb. Not an expensive one. Downtown is a 20 minute drive in light traffic. Within a 10 minute walk there are office buildings, grocery stores, shopping mall, gyms, parks, hiking and biking trails, etc. There are many cities to choose from; some are better planned than others. Based on your comment I would guess that you've opted to live in one of the "cool" cities in America.

Would you please share which city is this, that has everything within 10 minute walk in its suburbs? I'm a European who's lived in an "American downtown" because I was told the suburbs are horrible, but what you're describing sounds great.

Columbia, MD was one of the earlier planned suburbs. Each neighborhood has a grocery store. Worth looking at.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#158

Post by xw3098 »

mikewarot wrote: post #156
xw3098 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have this now https://efabless.com/

I can't... you might be able to afford $10k, but right now, I had to think hard before spending $3 last night. I hope to learn enough Verilog/VHDL/RTL to take advantage of the Free Shuttle program they have[1] eventually. Currently, I'm wondering how to go from expressions to code I can load into a bitgrid. The thought of parsing code, building an AST, converting that to an acyclic directed graph of binary expression…

You might try starting here then. It’s a good community as well

https://www.tinytapeout.com/

You’re not required to buy the tile to take the lessons

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#159

Post by mhh__ »

ta8903 wrote: post #33
rbongers wrote: post #7

I am surprised semiconductor engineers called it impossible. A cutting edge chip, sure, but a few thousand transistors?

Impossible for a teenager. This isn't like your everyday "kid makes a software startup" stories. He had to source all the machines, go through all the obscure documentation, understand how to test his yield, etc. He built his own photolithography machine ffs. I can't imagine the dedication required to go through this and believe in yourself every step of the way.

Helps to have some money too. I could just about afford to get some PCBs made for some RF work but ain't no way I was getting mum and dad to buy me my own electron microscope (or move house to have space)

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#160

Post by rfrey »

simultsop wrote: post #53
15155 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.smallsmt.biz/products/ or any similar Shenzhen special. Buy bigger over smaller. Buy, don't build. There will be a handful of recommendations for the Opulo Lumen/OpenPNP: avoid them. Avoid everything but ballscrew designs: you will spend an annoying amount of time trying to calibrate a belt-driven design and calibration will never stick. Please, do not make the mistake I did: get something with CL feeders…

I thought the entire plan of independence is building yourself and not buying at all.

There is no bright line on the DIY spectrum between that injection molder and making your own charcoal to refine iron.

I love building machines - enough so that I never build anything with them. Maybe someday I will, but by then 15155 will have built hundreds of things.

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