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Making RAM at Home [video]

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Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#71

So, I get that we charge the capacitor up, and that it leaks so we must recharge it periodically. I don't get two things: 1. How is the value read? Is it reading the leak? 2. How is recharging done? I guess the leak itself (assuming my guess in 1. holds) could provide charge for some logic that checks "if has charge then recharge else nop". I still don't really get transistors :P, but this was cool.

In the "real" DRAM chip, there is a large array of very tiny capacitors, with the switches which allow to connect one row of the array at a time to the readout column wires.

The capacitance of the wires themselves is typically an order of magnitude greater than that of the storage capacitors. So when the memory is read, the wires are first precharged to some standard voltage. Then the desired row of storage capacitors is connected to the wires, and the charges from the storage capacitors spread onto the wires, changing their voltages very slightly. These voltage deviations from the standard value are amplified by the "sense amplifiers". The amplifiers are sort of like flip-flops. Once they start in a state which "tilts" slightly to "zero" or slightly to "one", they go all the way to the full magnitude zeros and ones. This not only amplifies the signal, but also automatically brings the voltages on the wires and the still connected to them capacitors to the full magnitude, thus "refreshing" the data. The row is disconnected, and the next read cycle can start for some other row.

In the video, an array of 4x5 capacitors and the associated with them switches was fabricated. The capacitors in the video are several hundred times larger (12400 fF) than typical capacitors in a 64 Kbit DRAM (about 50 fF). I assume this is done so that in the later episodes the author could implement the readout electronics outside of the chip.

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#72
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do but my days in the fab taught me that you do NOT want people to do this, considering the extremely dangerous chemicals involved. People have died changing EMPTY tanks of phosphine gas used for doping… and HF acid used for etch is another nightmare entirely.

Honest question, is there a way to run the entire process acid-free?

No acids at all? That would be stupendously difficult for no real benefit. So many things are acids, so many useful reactions involve acids, and there's not a significant correlation between "is an acid" and "danger".

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#73

I'm not sure this is what they meant when they said they wanted to bring manufacturing back to the USA lol

Jokes aside, seeing as this person has created their own clean room in a shed, and is making RAM, what exactly is stopping any company from doing this themselves and breaking into the RAM business? I'd pay less for RAM that wasn't "certified" in some official way, at least it works.

So, CXMT?

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#74

I'm not sure this is what they meant when they said they wanted to bring manufacturing back to the USA lol

Jokes aside, seeing as this person has created their own clean room in a shed, and is making RAM, what exactly is stopping any company from doing this themselves and breaking into the RAM business? I'd pay less for RAM that wasn't "certified" in some official way, at least it works.

> what exactly is stopping any company from doing this themselves and breaking into the RAM business?

nothing, except the terrible yields that they would obtain, and the lack of scale making the entire enterprise not profit generating (as the amount of profit per sale is too low if it even is positive, but you can't set it higher as there's cheaper, "better" ram available from pre-established fabs that do have economies of scale).

You could play the artisanal angle, and market it as home grown, organic ram. Not sure how much real buyers of ram care, but might get a few hobbyists in the market.

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#75
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jokes aside, seeing as this person has created their own clean room in a shed, and is making RAM, what exactly is stopping any company from doing this themselves and breaking into the RAM business? I'd pay less for RAM that wasn't "certified" in some official way, at least it works.

> what exactly is stopping any company from doing this themselves and breaking into the RAM business? nothing, except the terrible yields that they would obtain, and the lack of scale making the entire enterprise not profit generating (as the amount of profit per sale is too low if it even is positive, but you can't set it higher as there's cheaper, "better" ram available from pre-established fabs that do have econom…

The angle right now I think is pretty obvious, there is a massive shortage that might cause actual incidents.

OpenAI should do their own production, I say slightly bitter because I'm in a health care sector that might be affected because we can't scale up or repair our infrastructure due to their massive pre-orders.

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#76
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, is there a way to run the entire process acid-free?

No acids at all? That would be stupendously difficult for no real benefit. So many things are acids, so many useful reactions involve acids, and there's not a significant correlation between "is an acid" and "danger".

yes acids capable of etching = danger :) aktschually

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#77

I'm not sure this is what they meant when they said they wanted to bring manufacturing back to the USA lol

Jokes aside, seeing as this person has created their own clean room in a shed, and is making RAM, what exactly is stopping any company from doing this themselves and breaking into the RAM business? I'd pay less for RAM that wasn't "certified" in some official way, at least it works.

It's really easy to set up a manufacturing process for basically anything if you can spend 100x per unit compared to the big optimized factories and you don't mind the product being a lot slower.

The clean room isn't the hard part about being competitive. It's using advanced lithography to cram billions of cells into a single chip. If you want make DDR2 chips on a 90 nanometer process, that is accessible to a whole lot of companies, but nobody will buy the product. And in the micrometer range you can DIY like this guy.

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jokes aside, seeing as this person has created their own clean room in a shed, and is making RAM, what exactly is stopping any company from doing this themselves and breaking into the RAM business? I'd pay less for RAM that wasn't "certified" in some official way, at least it works.

It's really easy to set up a manufacturing process for basically anything if you can spend 100x per unit compared to the big optimized factories and you don't mind the product being a lot slower. The clean room isn't the hard part about being competitive. It's using advanced lithography to cram billions of cells into a single chip. If you want make DDR2 chips on a 90 nanometer process, that is accessible to a whole l…

Nobody will buy the product?

I'm an infrastructure architect and work with health care, local tax agency, they're all getting 25-30% inflated bills now for new hardware.

And what happens when smaller companies have to repair or scale their infrastructure and can't get affordable RAM?

I'd say if people aren't desperate already, they're about to be.

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#79

I'm not sure this is what they meant when they said they wanted to bring manufacturing back to the USA lol

Jokes aside, seeing as this person has created their own clean room in a shed, and is making RAM, what exactly is stopping any company from doing this themselves and breaking into the RAM business? I'd pay less for RAM that wasn't "certified" in some official way, at least it works.

You can make eDRAM using logic processes (which are currently less bottlenecked than RAM, at least for non cutting-edge nodes) but the cost is still prohibitive compared to specialty DRAM processes (even when considering the recent increase in DRAM prices). If you were doing that, you'd want to use it for compute-in-memory instead, which basically pushes NUMA to an extreme of having lots of tiny cores each with direct access to its own local DRAM.

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admit it, deep down, our inner engeering child also wants to build a semiconductor clean room ;)

I do but my days in the fab taught me that you do NOT want people to do this, considering the extremely dangerous chemicals involved. People have died changing EMPTY tanks of phosphine gas used for doping… and HF acid used for etch is another nightmare entirely.

It is only half as bad as working in the places that make tbose chemicals for use in clean rooms. Swaping out "empty" phosphine tanks is bad, but filling and shipping hundreds of full tanks is worse.
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