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Making RAM at Home [video]

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Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#101

Post by mettamage »

waterTanuki wrote: post #7
LPisGood wrote: post #5

I saw this video yesterday and considered posting it, but I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate for HN. This channel has another video where it shows how the clean room lab is created starting from a basic backyard shed, and that was truly astounding. The positive pressure to keep the number of particles low in someone’s backyard is almost mystical to me.

Recently I saw a post about Bonsai trees on the front page. Making your own RAM is 100% more relevant to HN than quite a few posts I see on the main page.

It's about intellectual curiosity, so it's both.

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#102

Post by ErroneousBosh »

readitalready wrote: post #45
keysersoze33 wrote: post #41

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.

This is the issue I have with people saying that solar power is "clean and eco friendly".

It sure is, if you ignore the fact that you have to have a factory to make it where one of the *nicest* things around is the fucking hydrofluoric acid, and most of the rest will kill you instantly in trace amounts.

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#103

Post by muyuu »

INTPenis wrote: post #70
apatheticonion wrote: post #32

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.

i assume the reason is that this is a very competitive market and you need hundreds of billions in investment to just start producing at a competitive quality and price, with massive uncertainty that you will be able to make that money back

i mean, you'd think if someone is willing to through 60B (or 10B for an option to buy at a 60B valuation) at Cursor, then other people would give it a shot at starting a SotA semiconductor fab, but apparently the profit expectations are not there

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#104

Post by gtsnexp »

markovs_gun wrote: post #100
gtsnexp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No. Silicon oxide (glass) is extremely tough from a chemical perspective. That's why it's used in chemistry for everything. Barely anything touches it. Also this is the main reason I think that the meme of "silicon based life" is completely absurd and comes from people who only took high school chemistry and built their worldview on that.

Is it conceivable that some organic solvent could be synthesized that is, simultaneously harmless to water-based biological life, and capable of etching Silicon oxides?

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#105

Post by freakynit »

aledevv wrote: post #88
jukkan wrote: post #25

"There is no DownloadMoreRAM, it's just some guy in a backyard shed." https://downloadmoreram.com/

If they put a pricing page, I think there would be someone who would buy it, especially nowadays when with embedded llms there is a huge hunger for RAM (as well as CPU). :))

I was thinking... will x402 protocol make it super easy for scammers to commit such frauds in future? By tricking online searches done by LLM's to trick them into spending money?

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#107

Post by markovs_gun »

gtsnexp wrote: post #104
markovs_gun wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Silicon oxide (glass) is extremely tough from a chemical perspective. That's why it's used in chemistry for everything. Barely anything touches it. Also this is the main reason I think that the meme of "silicon based life" is completely absurd and comes from people who only took high school chemistry and built their worldview on that.

Is it conceivable that some organic solvent could be synthesized that is, simultaneously harmless to water-based biological life, and capable of etching Silicon oxides?

Not really. Organics don't really have any affinity for this type of compound. You could, of course, create some kind of organic fluorinating compound, but it would basically just put you back at square one for safety.

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#108

Post by peterfirefly »

peterfirefly wrote: post #53
the-smug-one wrote: post #31

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.

You measure the charge (if it is there) before it is completely gone (if it were ever there). Capacitors always leak, these capacitors leak fast. Measuring the charge also removes some of the charge -- fast, compared to the leak spead. DRAM chips have a circuit that writes the value back -- charges the capacitor up if there's supposed to be a charge, drains it if there's not supposed to be a charge. Refreshes and nor…

I know how to spell "speed" and "grid". Honest!
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