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22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

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Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#271

Post by erosenbe0 »

bruceb wrote: post #214
hwers wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably can't go wrong with giving your child resources that's too expensive for other children to be exposed to for some free future competitive advantage (which translates to adult success), as a general first heuristic.

AKA how Bill Gates because Bill Gates. One of the very few kids to have access to a computer at the time.

To be fair, Gates published one and only CS paper. It was on prefix sorting and shows pretty serious mastery of discrete math for his age or any age. Perhaps the co-author -- legendary algorithms professor Papadimitriou -- honed the proofs but Gates was clearly not a one-trick programming pony.

He also chased programming like a starved Tiger, doing things like looking through corporate trash bins for source listings and that sort of stuff. Not to mention that Allen was also a person of extreme intellect and Ballmer is actually a mathematician combined with a charismatic business brain and a small nuclear reactor in one.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#272

Post by pedrosorio »

hiptobecubic wrote: post #132
selimthegrim wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total Comp here, but in the subcontinent it also stands for something vulgar, so clarification or avoiding it is probably best.

Ironically, I don't know what "the subcontinent" refers to. Gatekeeping and in-speak happens naturally in every context.

That one is much easier to Google though, as the expression is really only used to refer to one thing (the Indian subcontinent)

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#273

Post by fisherjeff »

csense wrote: post #257

A 22-year-old builds 1970's-era chips with ~$1M capital in his garage. Intel builds 2020's-era chips with ~$20B capital in Ohio. Take the arithmetic mean of 1970 and 2020, and take the geometric mean of 1M and 20B. This very rough back-of-the-envelope calculation implies a small-ish company could build 1995-era chips with ~$141m capital. It seems to me that $141m is a quite reasonable "insurance policy" price major a…

I mean, most MCUs are already 15+ years behind the state of the art process node and are still supply constrained. The issue, I think, is that once these market conditions are resolved, any new fabs will have ~zero value, and there is a non-zero chance that your shiny new-old fab comes online after the shortage is over. Not an easy sell to shareholders I suspect.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#274

Post by resueman »

was_a_dev wrote: post #258
Symbiote wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd assumed they were in India, but they wrote in another comment "My PhD is funded by a research council and my stipend is £12k." I had forgotten the pathetic level of funding science PhDs get in Britain. £12k is possibly on the low end, but a PhD with this funding was on the fourth page of the main site listing them [1]. Minimum wage assuming a 40-hour working week is £19,760 per year, and after taxes works out to…

It truly is a career driven via passion rather than monetary gain

Well if you choose passion over money, it's not really luck anymore when someone has more money than you. An engineering undergrad can probably earn more in a summer internship than your stipend pays in a year.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#275

Post by plandis »

halpert wrote: post #170
hiptobecubic wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be careful with the "if they do it it must be sensible" reasoning. There are a lot of reasons that modeling firms using homo-economicus and perfect markets doesn't pan out.

To me, this is a case to apply Occam’s razor. What is more likely, that this decades old, Dilbertesque criticism of management is true, yet somehow eluded the purview of shareholders? Or that businesses are being run in a relatively efficient manner given the current human condition?

Just because something is good for shareholders doesn’t mean it’s good for non-management employees or society at large.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#276

Post by halpert »

plandis wrote: post #275
halpert wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, this is a case to apply Occam’s razor. What is more likely, that this decades old, Dilbertesque criticism of management is true, yet somehow eluded the purview of shareholders? Or that businesses are being run in a relatively efficient manner given the current human condition?

Just because something is good for shareholders doesn’t mean it’s good for non-management employees or society at large.

I never claimed it was. I was replying to a discussion on worker efficiency.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#277

Post by resueman »

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #262
resueman wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that goalpost sure made a leap. Spread it out over six years and imagine the kid is pulling in real cash with a youtube channel showcasing his projects.

The 1000 dollars bill is for a single piece of equipment, a full lab is considerably more. The median household income is 70k in the U.S, in western Europe it's closer to 30k. The income distribution on youtube follows a power law. I don't think that puts it within reach of your average middle class family, even over 5 years.

How about the distibution of income for youtube accounts with millions of views? which is what the article says he has.

He also has a patreon account linked on there.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#278

Post by steve_taylor »

ezconnect wrote: post #159
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #106

I'm more interested how he managed to master the knowledge of chip manufacturing plus a ton of electronics repairs (see his microscope and other equipment) at such an early age. Very admirable. Look at what he did: > Photolithography machines are expensive—up to $150 million—and so Zeloof made his own by bolting a modified conference room projector bought on Amazon onto a microscope. It projects his designs at tiny s…

He has support from his family.

Thanks for not politicizing this kid’s achievements.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#279

Post by sdze »

bradlys wrote: post #210
astura wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, It's not. I was a poor kid and didn't get financial support from my parents in young adulthood/college. I couldn't even fathom spending $1,000 on non-essential expenses during college. I was living entirely on student loans and minimum wage summer jobs - When that's your life you can't think about anything but pure survival. It's an entirely different mindset that I have now as a financially secure person. If I g…

Sorry. Posters here don’t understand. Why didn’t you have FAANG internships? Why didn’t you have an incredible scholarship that overpaid you and allowed you to spend $2000+/month on non-essential expenses cause everything else was covered. Not relatable! Not relatable! Does not compute! People here are incredibly out of touch. $1000 for a poor college kid is a huge amount of fucking money. I had a full ride, monthly…

I find it funny that you all really believe this story line.

It amazes me how easy it is to manipulate the masses. Like Elon Musk is the poor South African "inventor".

I am having problems believing a rich kid (must be because huge cellar in New Jersey) find a very expensive and crucial equipment and fixes it for a few dollars (1000).

Without this story line, it all wouldn't be fascinating.

I have problems when people post sensational stories about people like him. It makes poor people look stupid.

Just link to his youtube or where he publishes his findings or whatever, but stop spreading sensational news. Main info is: he is so young and he achieved so much. Look at you random 22 year old: What did you do?

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage

#280

Post by sdze »

was_a_dev wrote: post #94
xor99 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"One of Zeloof’s best finds was a broken electron microscope that cost $250,000 in the early ’90s; he bought it for $1,000 and repaired it."

Such find is niche, it doesn't happen outside of the US. I imagine it only happens in pockets of the US (say near a prominent university)

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