4 ms·
9 months from inception to first silicon is close to the speed of light, development and manufacturing-wise. I wish them good luck, as this is impacting several
by BooneJS 5y ago
9 months from inception to first silicon is close to the speed of light, development and manufacturing-wise. I wish them good luck, as this is impacting several industries downstream.
- Invictus0 5y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong but I believe the article is saying that outside companies will come in to use their existing designs on Intel equipment; Intel won't be designing new chips themselves.
- guepe 5y agoA fairly large amount of work is required to re-map the design onto Intel standard cells, which are not compatible with others. This means entire backend needs to be re-done. It's very significant amount of work.
- floxy 5y agoWhy would they port them to use new standard cells? Why wouldn't they just use the existing physical layout artwork to make new masks (i.e. GDSII files)? Assuming a closely compatible process. Maybe that's the catch? Intel's existing processes aren't close to anything anyone else has? Not that I think 6-9 months is reasonable.
- dboreham 5y agoBecause the layout depends on the process. And processes are different.
- BooneJS 5y agoIf it’s just standard cells, then it could go quick. Change technology library and synthesize. But if there’s process-specific IP (analog serdes, non-standard cells, etc), then that takes work. I presume most automobile chips are not leading node high-speed switches.
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- BooneJS 5y agoThat, and 3-4 months for manufacturing and test between tapeout and power-on. Automotive silicon has different test requirements than your average laptop widget.
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