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How do you build a semiconductor company on something that's free?

siliconimist.com

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Re: How do you build a semiconductor company on something that's free?

#11

Post by pjc50 »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #7
jdw64 wrote: post #3

I honestly think this is fundamentally impossible. Factory tech and Agile just don't mix. Failing in software is cheap, but with silicon, no matter how low the tape-out costs are, every failure costs you a massive amount of physical time. Also, open-source EDA tools are currently stuck on legacy nodes. Considering the huge gap with state-of-the-art nodes, why would anyone even bother? Software monetization works beca…

Regarding hardware, it's not entirely true that it doesn't need maintenance/development. See "stepping" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepping_level . There are sometimes ways to tweak the masks to fix a "silicon bug".

Yes, but that still costs significant money in a way that software deployment doesn't. IME most chips get maybe one or two metal layer revisions then a rev B consolidated bugfix - and then get left alone.

Re: How do you build a semiconductor company on something that's free?

#12

Post by elictronic »

elevation wrote: post #6
jdw64 wrote: post #3

I honestly think this is fundamentally impossible. Factory tech and Agile just don't mix. Failing in software is cheap, but with silicon, no matter how low the tape-out costs are, every failure costs you a massive amount of physical time. Also, open-source EDA tools are currently stuck on legacy nodes. Considering the huge gap with state-of-the-art nodes, why would anyone even bother? Software monetization works beca…

Why couldn't a company committed to mask fabrication and wafer fabrication, in concept, perform these steps daily, or several times daily? Multiple prototype designs could be grouped together so multiple customers can realize a new design instance in the same iteration. With an appropriate debug core in the same wafer, designers who'd completed a tape-out could connect to their chip well enough to repeat their design…

Because you are dealing with the physical world where those different designs have different requirements that can conflict. It’s like saying all software is basically the same, why don’t you just abstract it all and run it on these Raspberry Pi’s.

You can do that, but it’s going to turn out poorly.

Re: How do you build a semiconductor company on something that's free?

#13

Post by elevation »

monocasa wrote: post #8
elevation wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why couldn't a company committed to mask fabrication and wafer fabrication, in concept, perform these steps daily, or several times daily? Multiple prototype designs could be grouped together so multiple customers can realize a new design instance in the same iteration. With an appropriate debug core in the same wafer, designers who'd completed a tape-out could connect to their chip well enough to repeat their design…

The wafer manufacturing process takes weeks to months after a tape out.

Accelerating this process sounds like a good focus for an SBIR (small business innovation research) RFP.

Re: How do you build a semiconductor company on something that's free?

#14

Post by alefalfa »

pjc50 wrote: post #9
jdw64 wrote: post #3

I honestly think this is fundamentally impossible. Factory tech and Agile just don't mix. Failing in software is cheap, but with silicon, no matter how low the tape-out costs are, every failure costs you a massive amount of physical time. Also, open-source EDA tools are currently stuck on legacy nodes. Considering the huge gap with state-of-the-art nodes, why would anyone even bother? Software monetization works beca…

To add to this: the downstream customers also hate change, just as much as people hate Windows updates. They much prefer being able to buy the same chip for 10 years. (here at Medium-Size-Fabless-Semi-Inc, I'm in the middle of revving a bunch of parts that are about 10 years old, not because we want to add new features to them but because the process node is so obsolete it's becoming difficult to fab. Yes, they're ge…

I find it ironic how different the culture is between software and hardware people. This makes me very happy about my decision of going into software

Re: How do you build a semiconductor company on something that's free?

#15

Post by pjc50 »

elevation wrote: post #13
monocasa wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wafer manufacturing process takes weeks to months after a tape out.

Accelerating this process sounds like a good focus for an SBIR (small business innovation research) RFP.

A fab is not a small business!

Part of the delay is really just commercial. Fabs are optimized for utilization - throughput, not latency. A fab operator will prefer to queue up a load of work with as few gaps as possible, and your shuttle service run has to fit in one of the gaps. If you're NVIDIA and you've already booked the fab, there might not be so much delay. But not zero.

Nice little backgrounder: https://siliconmasters.co/blogs/our-blog/how-photomasks-for-...

Re: How do you build a semiconductor company on something that's free?

#16

Post by bee_rider »

elevation wrote: post #6
jdw64 wrote: post #3

I honestly think this is fundamentally impossible. Factory tech and Agile just don't mix. Failing in software is cheap, but with silicon, no matter how low the tape-out costs are, every failure costs you a massive amount of physical time. Also, open-source EDA tools are currently stuck on legacy nodes. Considering the huge gap with state-of-the-art nodes, why would anyone even bother? Software monetization works beca…

Why couldn't a company committed to mask fabrication and wafer fabrication, in concept, perform these steps daily, or several times daily? Multiple prototype designs could be grouped together so multiple customers can realize a new design instance in the same iteration. With an appropriate debug core in the same wafer, designers who'd completed a tape-out could connect to their chip well enough to repeat their design…

I sort of expected this to happen with tightly coupled customer-customizable chiplets inside a single package, instead. But it seems that packaging is also better left to Intel and AMD, I guess.

Re: How do you build a semiconductor company on something that's free?

#17

Post by jdw64 »

pjc50 wrote: post #9
jdw64 wrote: post #3

I honestly think this is fundamentally impossible. Factory tech and Agile just don't mix. Failing in software is cheap, but with silicon, no matter how low the tape-out costs are, every failure costs you a massive amount of physical time. Also, open-source EDA tools are currently stuck on legacy nodes. Considering the huge gap with state-of-the-art nodes, why would anyone even bother? Software monetization works beca…

To add to this: the downstream customers also hate change, just as much as people hate Windows updates. They much prefer being able to buy the same chip for 10 years. (here at Medium-Size-Fabless-Semi-Inc, I'm in the middle of revving a bunch of parts that are about 10 years old, not because we want to add new features to them but because the process node is so obsolete it's becoming difficult to fab. Yes, they're ge…

Your perspective is much more refined than mine, and I'm learning a lot from it. You come across as a senior programmer in the exact same industrial equipment field as me. Thank you for taking the time to comment

Re: How do you build a semiconductor company on something that's free?

#18

Post by petsfed »

pjc50 wrote: post #15
elevation wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accelerating this process sounds like a good focus for an SBIR (small business innovation research) RFP.

A fab is not a small business! Part of the delay is really just commercial. Fabs are optimized for utilization - throughput, not latency. A fab operator will prefer to queue up a load of work with as few gaps as possible, and your shuttle service run has to fit in one of the gaps. If you're NVIDIA and you've already booked the fab, there might not be so much delay. But not zero. Nice little backgrounder: https://sili…

Just to buttress and embroider around your point that a fab is not a small business:

If there was a realistic way even to go from bare wafers to non-trivial custom chips in a small-batch fashion, you can bet there would be a cottage industry around it. I would love to live in a world where I could manufacture custom silicon as easily as I can manufacture a custom PCB or custom mechanical part.

But as it stands, quick-turn, rapid-proto "micro" fabs are obscenely expensive, to the extent that if you aren't absolutely certain you need the performance gains from custom silicon, justified by years of R&D that confirms the inadequacy of a multi-chip solution, then the idea is killed before any layout engineer is contacted.

Microfabs are either operated by research institutes, or they're booked solid for years, and basically printing money.

Re: How do you build a semiconductor company on something that's free?

#19

Post by Espressosaurus »

pjc50 wrote: post #11
TheJoeMan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding hardware, it's not entirely true that it doesn't need maintenance/development. See "stepping" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepping_level . There are sometimes ways to tweak the masks to fix a "silicon bug".

Yes, but that still costs significant money in a way that software deployment doesn't. IME most chips get maybe one or two metal layer revisions then a rev B consolidated bugfix - and then get left alone.

Yeah, my experience has been exactly that. And the person paying the bills will try as hard as possible to avoid/delay a metal rev as possible because they’re expensive and time consuming so they blow up the schedule if you can’t release the chip with rev. A.

One place I worked at did fast iteration by pushing as much of the risk as they could off the silicon and by using several distinct ASICs instead of a single monolithic one which would have had better performance on its own. Gave them the ability to rev the different parts at the rate they needed it at a cost to software complexity and hardware compatibility and cost.

Re: How do you build a semiconductor company on something that's free?

#20

Post by elevation »

pjc50 wrote: post #15
elevation wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accelerating this process sounds like a good focus for an SBIR (small business innovation research) RFP.

A fab is not a small business! Part of the delay is really just commercial. Fabs are optimized for utilization - throughput, not latency. A fab operator will prefer to queue up a load of work with as few gaps as possible, and your shuttle service run has to fit in one of the gaps. If you're NVIDIA and you've already booked the fab, there might not be so much delay. But not zero. Nice little backgrounder: https://sili…

> A fab is not a small business!

An SBIR is just a cost effective way for the government to put a number of PhDs/engineers to work on a problem.

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