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Is it useless for first graders to learn to read, because they won’t be able to understand James Joyce? Are students who design and launch cubestats wasting th

by TomVDB 5y ago

Is it useless for first graders to learn to read, because they won’t be able to understand James Joyce? Are students who design and launch cubestats wasting their time because they can’t possible compete with commercial satellites? You managed to miss the point of this program completely. This program allows students and hobbyists to design and produce their own custom silicon. For free. They learn a ton, they’ll make mistakes, they’ll be able to see how others are solving issues, they go through the thrill of actually making their own chips, they’ll be able to test and characterize the result. Nobody, well, except you apparently, expects the result to be competitive with a state-of-the-art process or an FPGA.

bsder 5y ago
The problem is that this system puts people in a very complex design process at the 130nm node with no tools for managing that complexity. It's like teaching someone guitar on a $50 Walmart special. Yeah, it's sort of a guitar--but it won't stay in tune, the action is way too high, the ends of the frets are sharp, etc. It's more likely to discourage someone than convince them to go further. Even the simple designs I'm looking at are going to struggle because it's pretty clear they couldn't get accurate parasitic extraction. What students need is what the MOSIS (https://themosisservice.com/ https://themosisservice.com/) MPW service used to offer (and may still) with older technologies like 0.5um and 0.35 where you could estimate the parasitics by hand because the process was simple and the overlaps were small relative to the geometry. What even sillier is that E-Fabless supports the X-FAB 0.5um and 0.35um nodes which are a MUCH better match to this kind of MPW thing for beginners. Or, we need Google to pull its head out of its ass and do something useful for a switch--ie either 1) develop the physical design tools people need or 2) pay for people to get access to those tools.

by TomVDB 5y ago

bsder 5y ago

The problem is that this system puts people in a very complex design process at the 130nm node with no tools for managing that complexity. It's like teaching someone guitar on a $50 Walmart special. Yeah, it's sort of a guitar--but it won't stay in tune, the action is way too high, the ends of the frets are sharp, etc. It's more likely to discourage someone than convince them to go further. Even the simple designs I'm looking at are going to struggle because it's pretty clear they couldn't get accurate parasitic extraction. What students need is what the MOSIS (https://themosisservice.com/ https://themosisservice.com/) MPW service used to offer (and may still) with older technologies like 0.5um and 0.35 where you could estimate the parasitics by hand because the process was simple and the overlaps were small relative to the geometry. What even sillier is that E-Fabless supports the X-FAB 0.5um and 0.35um nodes which are a MUCH better match to this kind of MPW thing for beginners. Or, we need Google to pull its head out of its ass and do something useful for a switch--ie either 1) develop the physical design tools people need or 2) pay for people to get access to those tools.