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 open hardware design).
Related, I thought this post was actually this video, which is tongue in cheek but a pretty good explanation of silicon manufacturing nonetheless: https://youtu.be/vuvckBQ1bME
Been doing IC design professionally since 2010. Happy to answer any questions.
Couldn't agree more. And Pat Deegan's YT channel [1] is such a gem. His last few videos covering asic design toolchain, Kicad 8, and FPGA design are excellent.
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 realizing an SoC would be a substantial cost savings on an aggressively cost-optimized microcontroller-based design or IoT design. Being able to do a commercially viable small-to-medium-sized ASIC for a design that ships, say, less than 2M/year, would change a lot of things. It would be very interesting if that were the case in 5-10 years - what do you see from the IC design perspective?
1. Do smaller factories typically use pre-fabricated <100> p-wafers with a FET gate-layer for CMOS?
2. Also, is it normal to see circular thickness defects over +-200nm where a wafer vacuum-chuck was obviously set during double-sided polishing? The deformed synthetic sapphire wafers are ruining my fun.
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?
Yeah I think it will always be that way though because there's no real reason for hobbyists to design a custom IC - anything they can afford to get manufactured could be done on an FPGA.
Still, even the open source FPGA tooling is very far behind the commercial software, and there is a reason for hobbyists to use FPGAs. I really hope it improves eventually.
I'm not very hopeful though. My experience of switching from the software industry to the hardware industry has shown me that most hardware people are just really bad at software and also don't really care about it. (Which is kind of weird because hardware design is really just programming for an unusual target platform.)
The fact that Verilator exists and mostly works is a big outlier.
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)?
kayson|1 year ago
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 open hardware design).
Related, I thought this post was actually this video, which is tongue in cheek but a pretty good explanation of silicon manufacturing nonetheless: https://youtu.be/vuvckBQ1bME
Been doing IC design professionally since 2010. Happy to answer any questions.
guiambros|1 year ago
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@PsychogenicTechnologies/videos
buescher|1 year ago
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 realizing an SoC would be a substantial cost savings on an aggressively cost-optimized microcontroller-based design or IoT design. Being able to do a commercially viable small-to-medium-sized ASIC for a design that ships, say, less than 2M/year, would change a lot of things. It would be very interesting if that were the case in 5-10 years - what do you see from the IC design perspective?
danielEM|1 year ago
What cheap FPGA would you recommend to drive two 2k screens, implement Gbps LiFi transceiver and some basic video decoder??? ;-)
Joel_Mckay|1 year ago
2. Also, is it normal to see circular thickness defects over +-200nm where a wafer vacuum-chuck was obviously set during double-sided polishing? The deformed synthetic sapphire wafers are ruining my fun.
Thanks in advance, =)
jjk166|1 year ago
detourdog|1 year ago
I don’t expect a need for high megahertz but would be interested what to expect trade offs to expect as I scale up.
IshKebab|1 year ago
Still, even the open source FPGA tooling is very far behind the commercial software, and there is a reason for hobbyists to use FPGAs. I really hope it improves eventually.
I'm not very hopeful though. My experience of switching from the software industry to the hardware industry has shown me that most hardware people are just really bad at software and also don't really care about it. (Which is kind of weird because hardware design is really just programming for an unusual target platform.)
The fact that Verilator exists and mostly works is a big outlier.
TheRealNGenius|1 year ago
SPascareli13|1 year ago
robomartin|1 year ago
https://themosisservice.com/
pcdoodle|1 year ago