How to design and manufacture your own chip [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: How to design and manufacture your own chip [video]

#31

Post by imtringued » Sun, Jun 16, 2024, 8:00 AM UTC

kayson wrote: post #9

buescher wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really exciting what's going on with things like Tiny Tapeout/Efabless/ChipIgnite and whatever Google is sponsoring - I have a hard time keeping the players straight - as far as education and ambitious hobbyist use. You never know what will come from small designs, either. That said, despite what some ASIC houses will tell you, I haven't seen the costs narrowing on commercial ASIC design to the point that realiz…

For me, it was exciting, but now it's disappointing. The SkyWorks 130nm that TinyTapeout uses is ancient; they didn't really give away anything of value. The repository for that and the 90nm PDK haven't been touched in over a year. As I said, it's not substantial enough for me to think it's anything more than a PR stunt. Agreed. Custom design is still prohibitively expensive, and most often not needed. That being sai…

130nm is 1800€/mm^2 from global foundries. You need to order at least 10mm^2 meaning it costs 18000€ for 100 chips. 28nm will cost you at least 10000€ per mm^2. You get more transistors per dollar but the quantity of chips is the same.

Re: How to design and manufacture your own chip [video]

#32

Post by imtringued » Sun, Jun 16, 2024, 8:12 AM UTC

jjk166 wrote: post #4

kayson wrote: post #3

We really need more of this. There's such a great ecosystem and community around software development and education, but IC design is at least a decade of not two behind in this regard. Unfortunately, the open source tools are also decades behind. They're really only practical for small designs on the couple of open source PDKs that exist (and those seem more like abandoned PR projects than serious commitments to ope…

In your opinion, other than for funsies, what would be a good situation for an open source project to pursue a custom IC vs say an FPGA or making due with a commercially available IC?

The thing is, with every chip generation the non recurring engineering costs are heavily swinging towards FPGAs staying competitive at ever higher volumes. If you're happy with a CPU+FPGA combo and want to take advantage of 12 nm but your design fits on an FPGA, then it almost never makes sense to design an ASIC.

Your design would in principle have to be an analog design or something that simply cannot take advantage of smaller nodes i.e. MEMS.

Re: How to design and manufacture your own chip [video]

#33

Post by kayson » Sun, Jun 16, 2024, 7:35 PM UTC

TheRealNGenius wrote: post #25

kayson wrote: post #3

We really need more of this. There's such a great ecosystem and community around software development and education, but IC design is at least a decade of not two behind in this regard. Unfortunately, the open source tools are also decades behind. They're really only practical for small designs on the couple of open source PDKs that exist (and those seem more like abandoned PR projects than serious commitments to ope…

What would be the best way to get into ic design (aside from college). Any suggestions on how to go from beginner to your level (Or maybe just share your path)?

Professionally? Don't think there's a realistic path aside from college. EE undergrad (or possible CSE if you're interested in digital design) and these days an MS too. Otherwise, finding free information online. Many MIT and Stanford courses are available online, and there are some YouTube videos too.