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Making RAM at Home [video]

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Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#171

Post by fc417fc802 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #135
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magnetic core memory final form were single large perforated plates with many conductors plated on the ferrite surface through-holes, and only the vertical stack of bus wires were threaded through the plates. This meant weaving was less of an issue, and higher >1kiB modules were feasible in a smaller area. The main draw back is it sill had destructive read-once access, so always had higher latency in addition to bein…

> Neuromorphic computing will likely kick over the LLM sand pile at some point, and all that discounted hardware will need re-homed. I don't see a lot of work going on in neuromorphic - there was some work at Intel, IIRC. Not saying you're wrong, but just wondering where you think it's going to come from?

I expect you'd carry out most such work in the form of simulations, only moving to hardware once you'd demonstrated an efficient algorithm. If I'm right about that then it would be easy for any corporate R&D on the topic to fly under the radar indefinitely.

On the academic side of things there's a steady drip of papers on things like spiking neutral networks so I'd say the general theme is being explored.

I figure if a breakthrough happens it will be overnight just like what happened with transformers.

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#172

Post by fc417fc802 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #136
readitalready wrote: post #45

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.

I keep thinking that for home tinkering this is really the wrong approach. Surely there are other more DIY-friendly ways to make switches besides with semiconductors? Sure, they wouldn't achieve anywhere near the same density as SOTA semiconductors, but that's not really possible at home anyway.

I guess you could always go back to electromechanical relays. I wonder if it might be possible to come up with a method of 3D printing those?

But in practical terms the Z80 was a 4 um process node so unless you're willing to go back to the proverbial stone age it seems like you need semiconductors and lithography.

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#173

Post by [deleted] »

tooltower wrote: post #35
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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_random-access_memory#P... It turns out they intentionally drain a bit of the storage capacitor, and amplify that weak signal. Some of that amplified charge is then fed back to storage.

[deleted]

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#174

Post by Tuna-Fish »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #133
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did anyone forget that core memory is woven ? With knitting, beads and everything ? https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3173574.3174105

Magnetic core memory final form were single large perforated plates with many conductors plated on the ferrite surface through-holes, and only the vertical stack of bus wires were threaded through the plates. This meant weaving was less of an issue, and higher >1kiB modules were feasible in a smaller area. The main draw back is it sill had destructive read-once access, so always had higher latency in addition to bein…

The next big shift will be HBF. All that DRAM holding essentially static weights that are read in nice, long linear reads in inference machines is wasted; if you had a proper interface to it you could replace it all with flash for a tenth of the cost.

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#175

Post by CamperBob2 »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #22

1999. We will have flying cars 2024. LLMs - there will be robots 2026. How to make your own RAM

    2028. How to forage for edible plants and identify safe water sources
    2030. How to make horseshoes, nails, and plate armor
    2032. How to send smoke signals to neighboring villages
    2034. How to defend against barbarian incursions

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#177

Post by fancyfredbot »

nebula8804 wrote: post #157
INTPenis wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In one of Dwarkesh's interviews, he mentioned that China is trying to replicate the entire stack. Ironically now that they have mastered all pieces of the stack for older nodes, they actually have an advantage in a collapse scenario. The US does not appear to have the ability to do all steps in the stack for any node. They still rely on other western countries that could go offline. China despite being behind does at…

Lucky for America, in the case of civilizational collapse there will be a lot of spare semiconductors thanks to almost everyone being dead!

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#179

Post by brokenmachine »

saganus wrote: post #12
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.

If you haven't seen this one, I highly recommend it: Indistinguishable From Magic: Manufacturing Modern Computer Chips https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4&t=2070s It's quite old but I think there is no modern version of it. I've tried posting to HN a few times but it hasn't gained traction for some reason, but I find it absolutely mind blowing.

This was the one that did it for me: "38C3 - From Silicon to Sovereignty: How Advanced Chips Are Redefining Global Dominance" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdppYYfQJgg

Absolutely insane stuff.

Re: Making RAM at Home [video]

#180

Post by saganus »

brokenmachine wrote: post #179
saganus wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't seen this one, I highly recommend it: Indistinguishable From Magic: Manufacturing Modern Computer Chips https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4&t=2070s It's quite old but I think there is no modern version of it. I've tried posting to HN a few times but it hasn't gained traction for some reason, but I find it absolutely mind blowing.

This was the one that did it for me: "38C3 - From Silicon to Sovereignty: How Advanced Chips Are Redefining Global Dominance" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdppYYfQJgg Absolutely insane stuff.

This one I did not know! Thanks for sharing
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