3 ms·

I need to measure my preliminary design before the moment I ask for money. If I don't, there will be simply no reason to give me the money.

c_o_n_v_e_x 3y ago
To me, it sounds you are going to need money to measure your preliminary design. Investors appreciate taking a methodological approach to raising rounds of money for de-risking, rather than "I need $50mm upfront to do everything." I manage products on the board level, never been down to chip design. Are there design agencies/firms who are familiar with the processes (but are not fabs) that can be engaged to help de-risk your design / assess the manufacture-ability of your chip?
- chromoblob 3y ago
  I think that the level of expression of my design that will be necessary to pass it to such design agency under the condition of absence of concrete PDKs is so abstract that it will probably be pointless to do this - at this level my design has almost no information and I really don't see that it's wise to make blind preliminary decisions, and I don't want to outsource the work that I could do myself and hold myself accountable. At least I want to make the more concrete (intermediate) design myself from scratch and only then pass it on to experts to elaborate and improve it.
  - c_o_n_v_e_x 3y ago
    Fair enough. You could interpret your original post that the customer-side of things is a foregone conclusion (as in you've talked to a lot of prospective customers and you have high confidence your product will sell), now you just need to focus on designing the product. Is that the case? If you've talked to customers and have high confidence, why not raise money on the basis of a compelling product?
    - chromoblob 3y ago
      My idea is a new architecture for general-purpose processors / FPGAs. It may turn out a new successful processor architecture, or just a new FPGA / FPGA-like architecture, or it may be a practically unviable, unsuccessful idea. Need to make actual simulations to see if it is competitive or not. So in the case that the architecture is good, there is no doubt that the product will be in demand. The main question is whether my idea will actually work (architecture is competitive).
      - maximusdrex 3y ago
        General purpose processors and FPGAs are entirely different and share very few components or architectural characteristics. Setting that aside, if you have some revolutionary design for an architecture, that should already be abundantly clear from emulating your designs on FPGA. If you aren’t completely sure (and have evidence to prove) that your design is significantly better than anything that has been made before, you’re not at the stage where you should be thinking about manufacturing a chip with modern hardware. As was said elsewhere, making a chip is a phenomenally capital intense process so if you’re planning on competing with any existing hardware you’re going to need to justify that investment with radical gains, not incremental improvements. If you have an idea which you think could speed up existing hardware, your best bet is to work with/sell IP to companies which already design that hardware since it’s just not worth the investment needed to start a whole new chip company for a potentially 10% better CPU/FPGA.
        chromoblob 3y ago
        I just can't express my architecture in such an abstract form whose logic-level simulations (without considering delays, area, routing, power and clock rate) will give a clear indication of win. FPGAs are simply not accurate tools for this: they are slow and big, and FPGA vendor's HDL compilation tool's results' performance measurements simply don't map well enough to actual chip's performance (which also depends on the synthesis and routing of the logic circuit). I need to know actual PDKs. > General purpose processors and FPGAs are entirely different Sure, but I specifically want to research the optimal intermediate point between classical CPU architectures and classical FPGA architectures.

c_o_n_v_e_x 3y ago

To me, it sounds you are going to need money to measure your preliminary design. Investors appreciate taking a methodological approach to raising rounds of money for de-risking, rather than "I need $50mm upfront to do everything." I manage products on the board level, never been down to chip design. Are there design agencies/firms who are familiar with the processes (but are not fabs) that can be engaged to help de-risk your design / assess the manufacture-ability of your chip?

chromoblob 3y ago
I think that the level of expression of my design that will be necessary to pass it to such design agency under the condition of absence of concrete PDKs is so abstract that it will probably be pointless to do this - at this level my design has almost no information and I really don't see that it's wise to make blind preliminary decisions, and I don't want to outsource the work that I could do myself and hold myself accountable. At least I want to make the more concrete (intermediate) design myself from scratch and only then pass it on to experts to elaborate and improve it.
- c_o_n_v_e_x 3y ago
  Fair enough. You could interpret your original post that the customer-side of things is a foregone conclusion (as in you've talked to a lot of prospective customers and you have high confidence your product will sell), now you just need to focus on designing the product. Is that the case? If you've talked to customers and have high confidence, why not raise money on the basis of a compelling product?
  - chromoblob 3y ago
    My idea is a new architecture for general-purpose processors / FPGAs. It may turn out a new successful processor architecture, or just a new FPGA / FPGA-like architecture, or it may be a practically unviable, unsuccessful idea. Need to make actual simulations to see if it is competitive or not. So in the case that the architecture is good, there is no doubt that the product will be in demand. The main question is whether my idea will actually work (architecture is competitive).
    - maximusdrex 3y ago
      General purpose processors and FPGAs are entirely different and share very few components or architectural characteristics. Setting that aside, if you have some revolutionary design for an architecture, that should already be abundantly clear from emulating your designs on FPGA. If you aren’t completely sure (and have evidence to prove) that your design is significantly better than anything that has been made before, you’re not at the stage where you should be thinking about manufacturing a chip with modern hardware. As was said elsewhere, making a chip is a phenomenally capital intense process so if you’re planning on competing with any existing hardware you’re going to need to justify that investment with radical gains, not incremental improvements. If you have an idea which you think could speed up existing hardware, your best bet is to work with/sell IP to companies which already design that hardware since it’s just not worth the investment needed to start a whole new chip company for a potentially 10% better CPU/FPGA.
      - chromoblob 3y ago
        I just can't express my architecture in such an abstract form whose logic-level simulations (without considering delays, area, routing, power and clock rate) will give a clear indication of win. FPGAs are simply not accurate tools for this: they are slow and big, and FPGA vendor's HDL compilation tool's results' performance measurements simply don't map well enough to actual chip's performance (which also depends on the synthesis and routing of the logic circuit). I need to know actual PDKs. > General purpose processors and FPGAs are entirely different Sure, but I specifically want to research the optimal intermediate point between classical CPU architectures and classical FPGA architectures.