5 ms·

This chart is poorly implemented. TLDR: The chart attempts to show the relationship between Transistors Produces per Year and Transistor Cost per Year, but con

This chart is poorly implemented. TLDR: The chart attempts to show the relationship between Transistors Produces per Year and Transistor Cost per Year, but confuses the relationship by denoting the latter quantity in units that require mental multiplication to understand (transistor per $1.0 * $0.000000001) --- I see two curves, red ("Transistors Made Per Year") and black (Price Per Transistor (Billionths of $1)), both plotted versus a common range - "years," - with plot-lines horizontally and vertically to help me trace points on the curve to their respective values. Thank you, authors, for providing labels for the horizontal scale-lines on the graph (the vertical axes). You've understood that I might want to understand the relationship between different pairings of points between the red and black curves, and the horizontal lines help me rapidly estimate y-values for both. Or at least for the left-side y-axis (the red curve): "Transistors Made Per Year." To be honest, I'm having difficulty relating the the quantities denoted in the units of the right-hand y-axis (the black curve), "Price Per Transistor (Billionths of $1)," with both the red curve AND the x-axis. Here's why: I had trouble efficiently internalizing what the units of the black curve - "Price Per Transistor (Billionths of $1)" - really meant. I am lazy, so I only figured it out on the third paragraph of my comment. I kept glancing at the red curve, then the black curve and thinking something like "ok... in 1965 it looks like the red curve was about 10^9 "Transistors made that year"... and for the black curve, it was $10 Billion per Transistor... oh wait. I mean ($10 Billion * $0.000000001) per Transistor. So I guess thats.... uh... $10/Transistor($1)? I.e. each transistor cost $10 and $10 billion were made total that year (ah ha, for a total silicon market cap of $10/transistor * 10,000,000,000 transistor = $100B). Please don't make us do math to understand the units of one of the axis, if possible. Also, labels to denote the values of the vertical gridlines (ticks on the x-axis) would have been helpful. Without them, we have to mentally estimate their value by subtracting the high-side of the domain from the low-side, then dividing by the number of tick marks (alternatively, counting from 0 the number of vertical lines across the whole graph. In this case: (2014 - 1955)/(11 tick marks + 1) = 4.9266666... years ~5 years. That said, I'm pleased to see more transistors were manufactured in the last year than there are stars in several galaxies! Wow. But Kanye won't be impressed until the number exceeds the number of all KNOWN STARS in the UNIVERSE. So keep at it. Lastly... Isn't VLSI so 80's? Isn't there a VLSIVLSI now or something? Maybe VLSI^2?

wtallis 10y ago
> Lastly... Isn't VLSI so 80's? Isn't there a VLSIVLSI now or something? Maybe VLSI^2? The progress from discrete transistors to small-scale integration up through VLSI brought with it major changes in what kind of functionality could be integrated on a single device. That's mostly stopped: early VLSI chips were things like CPUs, and our largest chips today are still usually just processors (or FPGAs) with a similar role in the system as a whole. We've integrated all the co-processors and much of the I/O onto SoCs that largely aren't pushing the limits of transistor count or die size, and there are some instances of bringing more analog stuff like some power regulation and radios onto the chip. But for the most part, we're still using separate chips for the processor and the RAM and a bunch of smaller chips for various I/O tasks, even on tiny embedded systems like smartphones.
- Someone 10y ago
  Smart-phones aren't "tiny embedded systems". Also, smaller embedded systems do have RAM and various I/O on-chip (but not necessarily on-die). To grab a random (not even really tiny) one, http://www.atmel.com/devices/ATSAMB11.aspx http://www.atmel.com/devices/ATSAMB11.aspx: "The SAM B11 is an ultra-low power Bluetooth® SMART (BLE 4.1) System on a Chip with Integrated MCU, Transceiver, Modem, MAC, PA, TR Switch, and Power Management Unit (PMU). It is a standalone ARM® Cortex®-M0 applications processor with embedded Flash memory and BLE connectivity." All in 6x6 mm.
  - wtallis 10y ago
    Smartphones are tiny embedded systems in the sense that they are embedded systems, and their total circuit board area is a small multiple of the die size of their larger chips. They're physically quite space-constrained and don't have room for very many separate components, and the larger ones usually end up stacked.
- 100ideas 10y ago
  I thought one of Carver Mead's main motivations for developing VLSI with his students was that at the time, designing and fabbing a bespoke single silicon device (comprised of networks of many transistors) to implement a particular "program" was much harder than designing and building the same functionality from a "macro-network" of pre-existing, off-the-shelf, catalog transistor devices. I.e., it was easier to implement the logic for a traffic stop-light or an electronic calculator or a television remote-control by assembling a circuit from off-the-shelf components than it was to implement the same transistor logic in a single integrated circuit. It was definitely possible to do the latter in the early/mid 70's, but not as economical. Your comment points out that SoCs are the modern pinnacle of implementing everything "in silicon" - yet are we not also still implementing "the other half" of the system with circuits of many off-the-shelf ICs? I.e. one IC is CPU+Memorycache, another is RAM, a third is wifi module, etc.

wtallis 10y ago

> Lastly... Isn't VLSI so 80's? Isn't there a VLSIVLSI now or something? Maybe VLSI^2? The progress from discrete transistors to small-scale integration up through VLSI brought with it major changes in what kind of functionality could be integrated on a single device. That's mostly stopped: early VLSI chips were things like CPUs, and our largest chips today are still usually just processors (or FPGAs) with a similar role in the system as a whole. We've integrated all the co-processors and much of the I/O onto SoCs that largely aren't pushing the limits of transistor count or die size, and there are some instances of bringing more analog stuff like some power regulation and radios onto the chip. But for the most part, we're still using separate chips for the processor and the RAM and a bunch of smaller chips for various I/O tasks, even on tiny embedded systems like smartphones.

Someone 10y ago
Smart-phones aren't "tiny embedded systems". Also, smaller embedded systems do have RAM and various I/O on-chip (but not necessarily on-die). To grab a random (not even really tiny) one, http://www.atmel.com/devices/ATSAMB11.aspx http://www.atmel.com/devices/ATSAMB11.aspx: "The SAM B11 is an ultra-low power Bluetooth® SMART (BLE 4.1) System on a Chip with Integrated MCU, Transceiver, Modem, MAC, PA, TR Switch, and Power Management Unit (PMU). It is a standalone ARM® Cortex®-M0 applications processor with embedded Flash memory and BLE connectivity." All in 6x6 mm.
- wtallis 10y ago
  Smartphones are tiny embedded systems in the sense that they are embedded systems, and their total circuit board area is a small multiple of the die size of their larger chips. They're physically quite space-constrained and don't have room for very many separate components, and the larger ones usually end up stacked.
100ideas 10y ago
I thought one of Carver Mead's main motivations for developing VLSI with his students was that at the time, designing and fabbing a bespoke single silicon device (comprised of networks of many transistors) to implement a particular "program" was much harder than designing and building the same functionality from a "macro-network" of pre-existing, off-the-shelf, catalog transistor devices. I.e., it was easier to implement the logic for a traffic stop-light or an electronic calculator or a television remote-control by assembling a circuit from off-the-shelf components than it was to implement the same transistor logic in a single integrated circuit. It was definitely possible to do the latter in the early/mid 70's, but not as economical. Your comment points out that SoCs are the modern pinnacle of implementing everything "in silicon" - yet are we not also still implementing "the other half" of the system with circuits of many off-the-shelf ICs? I.e. one IC is CPU+Memorycache, another is RAM, a third is wifi module, etc.