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It's neat but will only benefit the largest companies with the most elite developers. I've learned a lot about hardware development in past year for purposes of imagining clean-slate, subversion-resistant chips. The work it takes to get the 90nm and below chips working, especially inexpensively, is pretty mind boggling with many aspects still dark arts shrouded in trade secrets. Many firms stay at 130-180nm levels with quite a few still selling tech closer to a micron than a 28nm chip. Tools to overcome these challenges cost over a million a seat. So, seeing another process shrink doesn't excite me given we haven't tapped the potential of what we already have. Lots of technologies help: EDA; FPGA's: S-ASIC's; multi-project wafers; ASIC-proven I.P. And so on. Yet, even 350nm still isn't very accessible to most companies wanting to make a chip because the tools, I.P., and expertise are too expensive (or scarce sometimes). Yet, the benefits are real in so many use-cases (esp security). I'd like to see more companies dramatically bringing the costs down and eliminating other barriers to entry with affordable prices. Example of the problems and what kind of work we're looking at:
http://eejournal.com/archives/articles/20110104-elephant/ Example direction to go in:
http://fpgacomputing.blogspot.com/2008/08/megahard-corp-open... I think the best model, though, is to do what the EDA vendors did: invest money into smart people, including in academia, to solve the NP-hard problems of each tool phase with incremental improvements over time. I'm thinking a non-profit with continuous funding by the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Wall St firms, etc. A membership fee plus licensing tools at cost, which continues to go down, might do it. Start with simpler problems such as place-and-route and ASIC gate-level simulation to deliver fast, easy-to-use, low cost tools. Savings against EDA tools bring in more members and customers whose money can be invested in maintaining those tools plus funding hardest ones (esp high-level synthesis). Also, money goes into good logic libraries for affordable process nodes. Non-commercial use is free but I.P. must be shared with members. Setup right, this thing could fund the hard stuff with commercial activity and benefit from academic/FOSS style submissions. With right structure, it also won't go away due to an acquisition or someone running out of money. Open source projects don't die: they just become unmaintained, temporarily or permanently. Someone can pick up the ball later. Thoughts? |