This will happen after widespread adoption of Wero and Linux.
What is Wero? Searching brings up a payment system.
It is a belge alternative to Mastercard, Visa, Discover and Mastercard.
Wouldn’t like GNU Taler be better?
Taler is a kind of wallet, Wero is a payments system. Different functions.
Before or after Linux phones?
Are you insane?
That is ultra hard to accomplish. I wish you luck you crazy bastards.
Well the design work done via the GPLv3 can be started pretty easily. The $5K per wafer spin however is a pain and it takes a while to get it back.
If you are getting a wafer fabbed for 5k, you are either on very old technology node, or you are talking about bulk pricing. You cannot get single wafers made for 5k on a modern node.
You are quite correct; but trying to start on the latest process seems like trying to bite off too much at once. Even old process nodes are sufficient to show a viable option going forward. And the design can be improved and moved to more advanced processes nodes.
There’s a reason why modern nodes are used. If you manufacture in a node old enough to get cost in that ballpark, you will miss out on power efficiency and performance that just the technology gets you, and it won’t be a salable product. Gpus are high performance products. Older nodes are usually relegated to support chips.
You are also not likely to be able to reuse the work you did, on literally anything physical. You will perhaps be able to reuse logic in vhdl or verilog. Nothing synthesized, though.
This isn’t software. In software, you can write architecture agnostic code and compile and run it on processors that span decades. That ability is intentionally baked into the languages and processor architecture.
None of that is true in semiconductor manufacturing. There is no guarantee that you can close a design with the same logic just by rerunning synthesis and routing in a new technology. As a matter of fact, ask a physical design engineer. They’ll laugh at you. You’re acting as if they don’t do anything for a living.
Overall, I dont believe you can show a viable option on a node that old, and attempting to do so would be additional work that needs redone to be able to sell a product in a more recent node.
Incumbents have other advantages too. They have long term relationships with fabs, that helps with pricing and scheduling. There are also reciprocal licenses for patents between incumbents. You’d potentially accidentally run afoul of patent laws if you use covered techniques. You will want to use these techniques if you want to be competitive.
I understand the desire for a free and open option, but there are different obstacles in hardware than there is in software. Hardware requires heaps of money to get off the ground.
All valid points but what I suggested was the strategy used by China to bootstrap their own industry. If it worked for them, why not for Europe as well?
What is China making that is competitive with NA design houses in the gpu space? My understanding is that China is buying Nvidia parts nerfed by US law. Do you think there is not a big pile of funding that these Chinese efforts have been provided? The European union and Chinese government have very different economic levers they can pull
If that would be great, unfortunately it’s more like $18k (https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/tsmcs-wafer-pricing-now-usd18-000-for-a-3nm-wafer-increased-by-over-3x-in-10-years-analyst). And that’s not the biggest cost issue, it’s actually the mask, which is more like in the millions of USD (https://semianalysis.com/2022/07/24/the-dark-side-of-the-semiconductor/)
Or we could avoid the mask costs entirely
Wdym by spin?
There is a design, fab, test cycle involved with working out all bugs in a design in relation to a specific lithography manufacturing process.
Rarely are full designs respun. That’s a huge waste of NRE cost. Lithography masks are millions of dollars.
Devices are characterized and techniques are explored on mpw designs. Multiple Pattern Wafer. Many customers design a small test die, and they are stitched together to make a single wafer and then you’ll get a few dies for evaluation. This way the cost is shared between many customers and experiments.
If even one mask (out of dozens) needs rework after a full design is getting fabbed, its considered a big error.
Thank you for clarifying.
And to think that Philips was involved in founding both ASML and TSMC but then divested from those companies instead of securing a European stake in the microchip business. We really do live in the stupidest timeline. 🙄
And Siemens sold their semiconductor division (now Infineon) which could’ve been a european powerhouse if properly supported - we really missed multiple chances to have a strong european semiconductor ecosystem, now were playing catchup with billions in subsidies insted.
Bull used to have one of the (maybe the) best CPU design teams on the planet. But as it was mostly government controlled, and the people there were mostly “meh, computers, that’s geek stuff, who needs that shit anyway, let’s go have lunch instead”, it died/was sold and everyone went elsewhere. Now there’s nothing left. Same story, more or less for all of Europe’s industries (“let’s do services, that’s the future!”). Bunch of idiots.
What about SiPearl and their big Rhea chips, Graphcore, and the big one , Imagination Technologies? What about the slowly withering Global Foundries?
I think Europe needs to pay attention to at their existing homegrown silicon gems and save/nuture/integrate them first.
Hei count me in, how do I join this?
Where do I sign up?
I’ll chip in 10€!
Watch Intel going bankrupt and TSMC becoming basically a manufacturing monopoly
Link that repo, man.
Are we in the ‘hardware as software’ age yet
Maybe using risc V vector extensions pushed to the limit? But I ain’t no hardware engineer
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it could work in asia but would go to shit in the eu after nvidia and amd nuke it to death with lawsuits.
I don’t think so. The EU is pretty good at maintaining fair competition, especially against American companies.
Sometimes I think I’m naive. Then I get a slap like this one.
Good one mate.
Didn’t we just see europe bending the knee to the American oligarchs…again?
I’d van der lying if said I had hope.
So you’re forgetting all the instances where american companies have been forced to paid fines again and again for breaching EU law, and base your opinion on one recent event?
Hmm. Naive isn’t the word, no.
I wish it were feasible.
But maybe you’ll make something GeForce 4 level after a decade of effort. Could be fun
