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Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

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Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#311

Post by stock_toaster »

Taek wrote: post #151

I've spent some time in the chip industry. It is awful, backwards, and super far behind. I didn't appreciate the full power of open source until I saw an industry that operates without it. Want a linter for your project? That's going to be $50k. Also, it's an absolutely terrible linter by software standards. In software, linters combine the best ideas from thousands of engineers across dozens of companies building on…

It’s interesting to consider this from a finance standpoint too. Consider/compare/contrast with open source software ecosystems where large amounts of money that large companies are able to effectively “strip mine” from the ecosystem.

Hopefully there is a middle ground somewhere, where the folks working on open source software can get compensated for their work so as to enable a healthier system overall, so we aren't all just “software serfs” sharecropping for our overlords.

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#312

Post by webmaven »

nullc wrote: post #219
phire wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would have problems with licensing the 68k ISA. I believe freescale currently owns the architecture, and still manufactures some 68k microcontroller cores.

> I believe freescale currently owns the architecture, Owns it how? 68060-- the last of 68k's designs-- was released in 1994. Any patents should now be expired.

> > I believe freescale currently owns the architecture,

> Owns it how? 68060-- the last of 68k's designs-- was released in 1994. Any patents should now be expired.

Sure, patents wouldn't be a barrier to clone the design and create an equivalent using the same patented ideas, but copyright still prevents you from copying the design, and will prevent copying significant parts of the design as well.

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#313

Post by lowtolerance »

x0 wrote: post #306
chii wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Want a linter for your project? That's going to be $50k. the thing is that i think the open source software is a miracle that it even exists, and i don't find it strange that nowhere else has replicated the success. Because open source, at heart, is quite altruistic.

Isn't it a miracle! It's fantastic, I've been reading old computer magazines from the 80s and 90s on archive.org, and the costs to set yourself up back then were just astronomical. I remember seeing C compilers priced at $300, or even more.

I think a full copy of Visual Studio in the late 90s was like $700-800.

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#314

Post by 38e7ruhrhdh »

koheripbal wrote: post #216
CabSauce wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In economics, ... but the power of cooperation seems to be valued much less I'm not sure that I agree with this. The creation of firms and trade are both cooperative. They aren't altruistic though. (I'm not disagreeing with your overall point, just that cooperation isn't valued in economics.)

Agreed - partnerships abound in the real business world. It might be under-modeled in economic theory and not well taught in business school, but the value of networking is and having high-level industry relationships is the life-blood of a good business leader - specifically because of partnering and information sharing.

If anything economics seems like the smarter field when compared to the open source community because the focus is on resource evaluation, allocation, and returns. Open source could probably use more talent but the missing lynchpin is obviously a reward structure. The techno-optimism of the 80s and 90s doesn't scale, we need licensing structures that entitle the parties doing the unprofitable stuff to a share of the profits their work produces. Resisting commercialization has weakened the community not made it stronger, open source can still be free without being free labor.

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#315

Post by shagie »

pjc50 wrote: post #81
janekm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first reaction was that it could be a recruitment drive of sorts to help build up their hardware team. Apple have been really smart in the last decade in buying up really good chip development teams and that is experience that is really hard to find.

Does Google have a silicon team?

It wouldn't surprise me. They've been designing custom hardware for some time. Look at the Pluto switch and the "can we make something even more high performance" or "we can make it simpler, cheaper, more specialized and save some watts" (which in turn saves on power for computing and power for cooling costs).

At the scale that Google is at, it really wouldn't surprise me if they were working on their own silicon to solve the problems that exist at that scale.

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#316

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

patwillson22 wrote: post #280

My advice to anyone who's looking for a pathway into open source silicon is to look into E-Beam lithography. Effectively E-Beam lithography involves using a scanning electron microscope to expose a resist on silicon. This process is normally considered to slow for industrial production but it's simplicity and size make it ideal for prototyping and photo mask production. The simplistic explanation for why this works i…

> I should also mention that commercial E-beam machines are pretty expensive (something like 1-Mil) but that I dont think it would be that difficult to engineer one for a mere fraction of that price.

I'm not sure where it was, but I remember a seeing a project where someone made a rudimentary homebrew electron microscope by chemically etching the tungsten filament from a light bulb (to get the tip sharp enough) and attaching it to a piezo buzzer that was scored to separate it into four quadrants. The filament could be moved by applying various combinations of voltage to the piezo quadrants.

I didn't find the one I was thinking of (which I think was ca. 2002 and so maybe just vanished by now), but search results suggest that variations of this have been done by several people.

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#317

Post by colejohnson66 »

webmaven wrote: post #312
nullc wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe freescale currently owns the architecture, Owns it how? 68060-- the last of 68k's designs-- was released in 1994. Any patents should now be expired.

> > I believe freescale currently owns the architecture, > Owns it how? 68060-- the last of 68k's designs-- was released in 1994. Any patents should now be expired. Sure, patents wouldn't be a barrier to clone the design and create an equivalent using the same patented ideas, but copyright still prevents you from copying the design, and will prevent copying significant parts of the design as well.

In other words: you can rearchitect it from scratch, but you probably can’t extract the die.

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#318

Post by mr_toad »

m12k wrote: post #170
Taek wrote: post #151

I've spent some time in the chip industry. It is awful, backwards, and super far behind. I didn't appreciate the full power of open source until I saw an industry that operates without it. Want a linter for your project? That's going to be $50k. Also, it's an absolutely terrible linter by software standards. In software, linters combine the best ideas from thousands of engineers across dozens of companies building on…

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. In economics, the value of competition is well understood and widely lauded, but the power of cooperation seems to be valued much less - cooperation simply doesn't seem as fashionable. But the FOSS world gives me hope - it shows me a world where cooperation is encouraged, and works really, really well. Where the best available solution isn't just the one that was made by a…

Software can be duplicated for near zero marginal cost. It’s a well studied phenomenon in economics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#319

Post by Spooky23 »

koheripbal wrote: post #216
CabSauce wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In economics, ... but the power of cooperation seems to be valued much less I'm not sure that I agree with this. The creation of firms and trade are both cooperative. They aren't altruistic though. (I'm not disagreeing with your overall point, just that cooperation isn't valued in economics.)

Agreed - partnerships abound in the real business world. It might be under-modeled in economic theory and not well taught in business school, but the value of networking is and having high-level industry relationships is the life-blood of a good business leader - specifically because of partnering and information sharing.

It’s the lifeblood of the leader, but not the firm.

A good percentage of being a good leader is being able to pick up the phone and get stuff done, which is often contrary to what the firm wants.

Re: Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips

#320

Post by lopsidedBrain »

naringas wrote: post #187
m12k wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. In economics, the value of competition is well understood and widely lauded, but the power of cooperation seems to be valued much less - cooperation simply doesn't seem as fashionable. But the FOSS world gives me hope - it shows me a world where cooperation is encouraged, and works really, really well. Where the best available solution isn't just the one that was made by a…

but let's not forget the non-material nature of software allows this, hardware will always be a physical (material) artifact. however the line does blur when talking about blueprints and designs. in any case, I think that free software movements are a sociological anomaly, I wonder if there is any academic research into this from an antropological or an historical economics viewpoint. also, it seems to me that in som…

The material nature of hardware is barely any higher than that of software. Yes, you cannot just copy bits around, but you can take the same design and fabricate millions of chips for pennies. The cost of production for any given chip of Silicon has almost nothing to do with its material cost. It has everything to do with the amount of design work that went into it, just like software. None of that appreciably changes the benefits of cooperation vs competition.
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