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I am just wondering, why there is no similar product as FPGA array. As far as I know, it’s the cheapest way to see if there is product/market fit for a semicond
by lnsru 7y ago
I am just wondering, why there is no similar product as FPGA array. As far as I know, it’s the cheapest way to see if there is product/market fit for a semiconductor product. High speed transceiver as well as memory controllers are included in FPGA. This single wafer approach looks very interesting to me. I was intern at Infineon some time ago and was working on device distribution characterization across 200 mm wafer. The chips in the middle were 2-3 better performing than these in the border. So how Cerberas’s chip manages this issue? Middle parts are throttled or low performing areas near wafer’s boarder are disabled? How much does it cost?.. I can imagine it being shipped on thermal pad with liquid nitrogen cooling bellow. There must be some wires bonded for interface to the host. Very interesting technical project. I am very curious what are the clients for such huge specialized chip.
- morphle 7y agoAn FPGA would make it much more generic a product so you can sell to more markets. But you would loose a factor 200 (a factor 1000 with traditional FPGA design) to make transistors reconfigurable. If you leave the wafer intact, you get 70,000 mm2. Cerebras cut off almost half of the wafer. At 7nm you would get 2.7 trillon transistors with 300mm wafers, more with 450 mm wafers. You disable those reticle-sized areas with impurities or damage at runtime. You can cool it with immersive liquid cooling. Instead of wire bonding you can stack chips on top or use free space optics [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hWWyuesmhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hWWyuesmhs