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Ask HN: Chip startups?
Are there any start-ups in the chip space? I think this falls in the 'sounds like a bad idea' bucket, but could be potentially good idea.
- systemvoltage 4y agoAny chip manufacturing startups? If not Fab, equipment, Fab software, etc?
- solomatov 4y agoOf course there're. Couple of examples: - https://www.sifive.com/ https://www.sifive.com/ - RISC-V related company - https://www.cerebras.net/ https://www.cerebras.net/ - Cerebras (AI accelerator) Both of categories has other players, these are just two notable examples.
- irq-1 4y agoOT don't use contractions "there're" at the end of a sentence, use "there are." Yesterday I saw a subtitle that did the same thing, very confusing.
- frozenport 4y agoCurrently living in a Cambrian explosion of AI chips: https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2019/01/23/2019-a-cambrian-explosion-in-deep-learning-part-1/?sh=5b5a7b14dc15 https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2019/01/23/2019-a-...
- 0xbadc0de5 4y agohttps://tenstorrent.com/ https://tenstorrent.com/
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- Lind5 4y agoSemiconductor Engineering does a monthly startup funding report. All are chip industry related https://semiengineering.com/knowledge_centers/startups/ https://semiengineering.com/knowledge_centers/startups/
- runjake 4y agoI don't mean to be rude, but you could have Googled and gotten a pretty rich and interesting set of results: https://www.google.com/search?q=chip+startups https://www.google.com/search?q=chip+startups I'm pretty impressed with the number of AI/neural network semiconductor startups right now.
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- mighty_donkey 4y agoSure, but HN is a great place to get a filtered list based on expert opinion. I love seeing these threads. A lot of things you see here could've been 'Googled', but what's the fun in that?
- eatonphil 4y agoPlus google results for this sort of thing skew towards companies that market well, if at all.
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- fragmede 4y agoThanks for linking to your Google search. I never would have found that otherwise.
- Centigonal 4y agoLots of cool stuff in the hardware AI space https://sambanova.ai/ https://sambanova.ai/ - Enterprise AI and dataflow-as-a-service for established moodels https://www.cerebras.net/ https://www.cerebras.net/ - AI accelerator, trying to compete with NVidia https://www.graphcore.ai/ https://www.graphcore.ai/ - Another AI accelerator company - UK based https://femtosense.ai/ https://femtosense.ai/ - Sparse NNs on very low power chips - cool hardware and software challenges https://sima.ai/ https://sima.ai/ - ML accelerators for embedded applications https://ambiq.com/ https://ambiq.com/ - Not AI, but low power chips for wireless using some fancy tech that reduces energy leakage There are dozens more, these are just the ones I've heard of.
- asciimike 4y agoAdding a few I know of: https://groq.com/ https://groq.com/ - From the team that built the original TPU at Google https://lightmatter.co/ https://lightmatter.co/ - Light tubes instead of copper
- hbrav 4y agoAdding one more: https://www.untether.ai/ https://www.untether.ai/
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- hashflu 4y agoAdding: https://www.esperanto.ai/ https://www.esperanto.ai/ - RISC-V based Tensor computes chip, Founded by Intel Hybrid Parallel Computing Vice President Dave Ditzel. https://www.furiosa.ai/ https://www.furiosa.ai/ - AI accelerator company which show good results in MLPerf benchmark.
- ahmadmijot 4y agoNot chip the microchip manufacturing but the chip in chip design (IC design) space. I'm currently a part of startup in this area. It's so costly I don't know how other related startups can survive though.
- mkoryak 4y agohttps://pulppantry.com/ https://pulppantry.com/
- MontyCarloHall 4y agoLikely vaporware at this point, but no discussion of chip startups is complete without mentioning Mill Computing: https://millcomputing.com/ https://millcomputing.com/ It would represent a true architectural revolution if it ever actually came to fruition. Lots of past discussion on HackerNews over the decade(!) it’s been under development.
- Symmetry 4y agoI guess they're technically a startup, but people working part time together for equity with no outside capital isn't what what we normally mean by the word.
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- phlipski 4y agohttps://mythic.ai/ https://mythic.ai/ - analog AI inference engines https://www.uhnder.com/ https://www.uhnder.com/ - radar on a chip
- synergy20 4y agoMythic.ai laid off 50% recently
- polalavik 4y agoThis thread reminded me of potato semi. which is always a good (but dead serious?) laugh. http://www.potatosemi.com/ http://www.potatosemi.com/
- nivertech 4y agoThere is also a UK chip startup: Fish NAND Semi Ltd HTTPS://wwww.fishnandsemi.co.uk/
- davidcox143 4y agoIntegrated Reasoning (S22) is building fast hardware for optimization problems. We currently target AWS F1 FPGA instances, and custom ASICs are on our roadmap. hn@ir.design https://ycombinator.com/launches/64273 https://ycombinator.com/launches/64273 https://integrated-reasoning.com/ https://integrated-reasoning.com/
- servitor 4y agoRivos Inc. A RISC-V startup supposedly with many ex-Apple engineers.
- pveierland 4y agoNorwegian chip startups: - ONiO: Single-chip microcontroller with builtin energy harvesting and radio communication, enabling IoT devices without battery or dedicated charging. https://www.onio.com/ https://www.onio.com/ - Ascenium: Software-defined CPU without an instruction set. Highly parallel architecture with extensive compiler integration. https://www.ascenium.com/ https://www.ascenium.com/ - Disruptive Technologies: Single-chip compute + sensing with built-in battery for 10+ year operation. https://www.disruptive-technologies.com/ https://www.disruptive-technologies.com/
- deaddodo 4y ago> - Ascenium: Software-defined CPU without an instruction set. Highly parallel architecture with extensive compiler integration. This is marketing BS if I've ever heard it. Their "instruction set" is LLVM. They're doing nothing more than what Transmeta (dynamic/programmable ISA) or Lisp/Arm-Java machines (running higher level code at a machine level) did before them.
- pveierland 4y agoYeah, agree on the instruction set part - however they are moving the abstraction level to a point where there should be more room for optimization. I don't know enough about the technology to make any judgement - I just know a really smart guy who works there. Hopefully it turns into something cool :-)
- marcosdumay 4y ago> I think this falls in the 'sounds like a bad idea' bucket With enough funding, it's quite a good thing to work on. With Moore's law dead, the odds of success of weird chips got much better.
- systemvoltage 4y ago> With Moore's law dead Jim Keller: Moore’s Law is Not Dead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIG9ztQw2Gc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIG9ztQw2Gc
- marcosdumay 4y agoI'm not watching a 1 hour video, sorry. I've jumped around it and didn't see any mention of cost/transistor going down. So I assume that isn't a respected engineer saying the opposite of what all the data clearly shows, and instead it's a hyped title to a talk about something slightly different.
- kanwisher 4y agoThis is one of the most respected engineers in the industry, he built chips for Intel, Amd64 and even Tesla chips. He talks about how there are lots of innovations at different places in cpu stack that keep giving performance gains. Even stuff like prediction of what future code will run, and run multiple copies in parrellel and only use the result of the computation that’s needed .
- marcosdumay 4y agoYep, that's what I got from jumping around the video, thanks for the confirmation. None of that has any relation to Moore's law.
- bsder 4y agoCost of memory transistors has gone up on the last couple of nodes. NVIDIA has complained about it publicly. Batteries are not on Moore's Law and more of our systems are battery powered so portable electronics is not on Moore's Law. Transistors are not cheaper if you can't turn them on. Power goes as area squared and voltage squared. We can't turn voltage down any further and cheaper transistors mean area goes up. This means that most computation chips are fairly close to their thermal limits. Transistors are not cheaper if your cooling solution costs 10x more.
- synergy20 4y agoI work for one now, it's very challenging * very cash heavy(EDA tools, IP license, engineer wage, fab money,etc) * very challenging technically(balance of computation, power, size,etc) * lots of work needed on the software side(compiler,SDK,optimized libs,etc) It is in a totally different world comparing to MVP or the lean startup concept. Hardware(circuit board related) startup is already challenging(cash heavy, logistic challenges,etc), chip startup is 100x more. The later is about more than one hundred people with hundreds of millions investment to just get started.
- IshKebab 4y agoI mostly agree except that I'm not sure I'd say its very challenging technically. The logical design itself that I've seen is mostly extremely simple, just extensive. Verif is a bit fiddly but not really that hard, compared to e.g. writing a compiler or automating GUI testing. I don't know anything about physical design though; maybe that's really hard? I 100% agree with your other points though. It costs an absolute fortune, and everyone always underestimates the software effort. It's probably 5-10x the hardware effort, depending on what your chip does. Also another thing I didn't anticipate is how backwards all the tooling and people are in the chip design space. CI is a novel concept. I'm sure there are companies not using version control. Everything runs on TCL which is on par with BASIC. SystemVerilog is not a good language (though it does at least have an amazing reference manual). The standard verification method (UVM) is ok from an actual verification point of view but basically a who's who of worst practices from a programming point of view. Maybe it's different elsewhere but I was amazed how much convincing I had to do to get people to adopt practices that are just taken for granted in the software world, like auto-formatters. There are a lot of luddites. The only "ok this is actually pretty good" thing I've seen is formal verification which is basically magic.
- bsder 4y ago> There are a lot of luddites. In chip design, there are a lot of non-software people who have been burned by software people. Given the amounts of money flying around, there are always a lot of charlatans looking to take a chunk out of you. We used to do CI--a complete CI on our chip took 4 days. The library took 3 weeks to go through CI. Version control sucks unless your data is text--generally that's only your Verilog. Tcl is a decent enough language--the problem is that the stuff you write is no more than a one off and the real product is your chip--so nobody is going to reward you for a "good" script in any language. SystemVerilog wasn't meant to be a good language--it's an EDA vendor lockin meant to extract maximal money from hardware people. And I've seen more verification in hardware before shipping a product than I EVER have seen in any software role. Yes, even those with "good" testing.
- adapteva 4y agoHere's a compiled list of most of them. https://github.com/aolofsson/awesome-semiconductor-startups https://github.com/aolofsson/awesome-semiconductor-startups
- 0xPIT 4y agohttps://www.silina.io https://www.silina.io
- Symmetry 4y agoI worked for Ember for a while which was a startup that produced a ZigBee chip. It'll be hard to target cutting edge nodes but it can work. I left when they were eventually bought by Silicon Labs.
- new_user8675309 4y agoFor anyone interested in Ethernet PHYs, we are hiring! IPO'd early 2022, fast growing, and still a start-up environment https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3108025120/?refId=iI7RO%2BqjnzlnvCSKla5DaQ%3D%3D https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3108025120/?refId=iI7RO%2...
- mindentropy 4y agoWhat is different between Credo's PHY versus something like a Broadcom PHY?
- humanwhosits 4y agoI can think of SiFive and Tenstorrent
- ov_ov 4y agohttps://infiniteseconds.com/ https://infiniteseconds.com/ ~ IP single-chip, energy harvest, sensing, flexible, low-power, IOT ready, in-house manufacturing, big infrastructure ready. "Paint your Night with Light".
- mindentropy 4y agoWhy doesn't the website say anything about the product? It is just an infinite symbol.
- 7ero 4y agojoin a fab
- illgenr 4y agoPlug for my startup, Ephemeraltronics. I'm designing an affordable electron microscope for high schools and small businesses. While that doesn't sound like a chip startup, the long term goal is to create multipurpose tools that enable semiconductor fabrication with electron beam milling and chemical vapor deposition.
- mindentropy 4y agoHave you checked out IMEC and their imaging sensors? They have fantastic technology and are open to spinoffs and funding.
- illgenr 4y agoNo, looks like a really cool company. Their hyperspectral imaging sensors will definitely enable a lot cool science. Limited to optical frequencies though so not as useful for the type of micro or nano scale imaging semiconductors require.
- mindentropy 4y agoI had worked on their Hyperspectral imaging sensors providing surrounding support (Dev kit + SW stack). It is definitely cool and has a lot of applications especially for detection of adulteration in food etc.
- aclindsa 4y agoIt's been around for a few years now, but probably still considered a startup: https://amperecomputing.com https://amperecomputing.com
- stdcall83 4y agoI'm working in one right now. www.neureality.ai