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

I have a feeling that making chips at home will require the ditching of silicon based technology. Yes, this will be accompanied by performance loss. Perhaps organic semiconductors have less complicated processes. Or techniques like molecular self assembly, nano imprinting, etc.

It really is wild what you can do in your garage these days. Since the early 2010’s there has been a true revolution in this space that has only accelerated over the last few years. I have an injection molding machine that I built in my garage for less than $1500 USD that has a 3 cubic inch injection volume, able to make a large variety of plastic components at small production scale using a mold I printed from my $500 USD resin printer. A guy I met at the maker space has a literal pick and place and wave soldering machine in his garage and he is etching wafers on his desktop CNC. Hardware has never been more accessible.

Hardware is still really hard. But it’s definitely something someone with a software salary can bootstrap in their garage these days. Especially because I can go to JLCPCB and get some reasonably complex fully assembled prototype boards shipped to me in a week or two for $5-20 USD per unit. Ridiculously nice

Indeed. The hardest part these days is getting access to a garage.

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I hope he doesn't have to work these hours. That would be awful, even if you loved it.

The risk of burnout would be very high, and not reasonable for such a profoundly knowledgeable resource.

"We all take two years to develop one generation, how come you guys can do it in one or one-and-a-half year?" And they asked if some of your customer transfer technology to you or what not? And I told him, "No," I told him that, "That's not true." I think he probably implied we steal technology from customer, the way he talk.

And I say, "I'll tell you why." I said that, "When we develop one node, basically you have some learning cycles. First, you do some simulation. And you have some idea, then you run wafers to prove that. So, you run a group of wafers according to simulation and you have some splits. The wafer runs through the fab, they come out and you measure them, you analyze them, and you try to improve and you run this again. This again, you run. So, this is learning cycle." At that time, "It takes about six learning cycle, roughly, to complete one generation." Of course, you had some short loops and not just one. I said that, "My R&D wafer in the fab run much faster than yours, because my R&D engineer works three shifts and you only work one shift. So, your R&D wafer move eight hours a day, my work/move 24-hours a day. So, my wafers go three times faster, even if you are twice smarter than me, I still beat you up."

https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10279267...