1. Forum
  2. Usenet
  3. COMP.LANG.FORTH

  • Design your Own Chip

    From mhx@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jul 14 14:32:23 2024
    One of the things I expect to happen in the next
    decade is that people have their own chips and SOCs
    *manufactured* like they currently order their
    breadboards.

    The problem is not of design -- that has been possible
    for a long time already. It is the scale: manufacturing
    a few ICs for a single project is simply too expensive.

    It appears that we won't have to wait another 10 years: https://tinytapeout.com/ has found a way to pack multiple
    designs on a single die. Your own chip might be in the
    mail for less than 100$ (if you have 4 friends).

    Very probably this development will trigger interest
    for very small, powerful, and memory efficient languages
    (assuming these projects will use yesterday's chip
    processes, not a 2nm fab).

    -marcel

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Anton Ertl@21:1/5 to mhx on Sun Jul 14 15:29:01 2024
    mhx@iae.nl (mhx) writes:
    One of the things I expect to happen in the next
    decade is that people have their own chips and SOCs
    *manufactured* like they currently order their
    breadboards.

    To some extent this has happened since the 1980s <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead%E2%80%93Conway_VLSI_chip_design_revolution>

    I don't expect the extent to increase. The reason is that the cost of
    mask sets has increased to millions of dollars as processes have advanced.

    So while MOSIS <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSIS> and now TINY
    TAPEOUT offer relatively cheap chip manufacturing for low numbers of
    chips, MOSIS is funded by DARPA. And I expect that there is also some
    subsidy involved by the foundries, in the hope that some of the
    projects will take off and get into high-volume production where they
    pay real money for both the masks and the wafer processing.

    The problem is not of design -- that has been possible
    for a long time already.

    I did not see much about TINY TAPEOUT withou JavaScript (which I did
    not use), but from what I saw, their story is that they make the
    designing easier and cheaper (and offer manufacturing for
    one-stop-shopping).

    Very probably this development will trigger interest
    for very small, powerful, and memory efficient languages
    (assuming these projects will use yesterday's chip
    processes, not a 2nm fab).

    A few years ago I looked at what MOSIS offers. It had a number of
    yesteryear processes, but also offered access to an almost-current
    TSMC and IIRC Globalfoundry process.

    I don't see what process TINY TAPEOUT offers. The 160 x 100 um tile
    may be a bit disappointing if it's a 0.35um process.

    - anton
    --
    M. Anton Ertl http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
    comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
    New standard: https://forth-standard.org/
    EuroForth 2024: https://euro.theforth.net

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From mhx@21:1/5 to Anton Ertl on Sun Jul 14 17:04:52 2024
    On Sun, 14 Jul 2024 15:29:01 +0000, Anton Ertl wrote:

    mhx@iae.nl (mhx) writes:
    One of the things I expect to happen in the next
    decade is that people have their own chips and SOCs
    *manufactured* like they currently order their
    breadboards.
    [.. informative comments deleted ..]

    I don't see what process TINY TAPEOUT offers. The 160 x 100 um tile
    may be a bit disappointing if it's a 0.35um process.

    They advise to start with an FPGA project, but I see talk
    about RISC V and the Skywater 130nm process (Pentium IV?).
    An FPGA process is certainly better than 350nm, and I guess
    (I'm not an expert) no custom masks are needed.

    -marcel

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl@21:1/5 to mhx on Mon Jul 15 12:26:10 2024
    In article <dd4acaebed3384b5faadeeba28a7c75e@www.novabbs.com>,
    mhx <mhx@iae.nl> wrote:
    One of the things I expect to happen in the next
    decade is that people have their own chips and SOCs
    *manufactured* like they currently order their
    breadboards.

    The problem is not of design -- that has been possible
    for a long time already. It is the scale: manufacturing
    a few ICs for a single project is simply too expensive.

    It appears that we won't have to wait another 10 years: >https://tinytapeout.com/ has found a way to pack multiple
    designs on a single die. Your own chip might be in the
    mail for less than 100$ (if you have 4 friends).

    Very probably this development will trigger interest
    for very small, powerful, and memory efficient languages
    (assuming these projects will use yesterday's chip
    processes, not a 2nm fab).

    Remember the F.I.E.T.S. project, with Kees Moerman and the
    late Arie Kattenberg? The instruction set was mostly my doing,
    and Kees Moerman had the instruction set implemented on
    my Osborne (CP/M) and the emulator ran a Forth?
    We didn't go further, because Chuck Moore was first with
    his NOVIX chip.
    This could become interesting.
    Forth
    Implementation by
    Enhanced
    T...
    System
    (The fashion was to contrive cute acronyms)


    -marcel
    --
    Don't praise the day before the evening. One swallow doesn't make spring.
    You must not say "hey" before you have crossed the bridge. Don't sell the
    hide of the bear until you shot it. Better one bird in the hand than ten in
    the air. First gain is a cat purring. - the Wise from Antrim -

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)