3 ms·

Isn't the cost of the equipment and sophistication required to operate the biggest barrier to entry? How would open sourcing change that?

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
It wouldn't. HN lives in a SW bubble where Foss is the solution to everything , but fails to see that capital is the main barrier in the semi industry and, unlike their Node library, the secret sauce of cutting edge chips is a matter of national security at this point and will be kept as close to the chest as possible.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  Actually if the IC design tools would be FOSS, the cost of new designs would decrease considerably, even up to two times. The cost of the subscriptions to the design tools provided by Cadence, Synopsis, Siemens (Mentor) and a few others is ridiculously high and it can contribute with many millions of $ to the design cost of a state-of-the-art chip. The design tools themselves have been improved extremely slowly and they are of a quite low quality for so expensive professional tools. In an open-source environment it would be easy to make much better alternatives. The reason that only a few timid attempts exist to provide alternatives for only some parts of a complete toolchain, is that the semiconductor manufacturers, like TSMC, do not provide public information about the exact data that they need as input for manufacturing, about the design rules that must be implemented for valid designs and about the characteristics of their processes that must be known for simulations. All this information is available only to big companies like Synopsis, Cadence etc. and this perpetuates their monopoly and their ability of extracting huge amounts of money with minimal software development work, from all the companies that design ICs. While the companies that design ICs are not happy for this huge rent that they pay for the design tools, they are also extremely risk-averse and they do not want to make any change in their design workflows, no matter how small, that might increase the risks of failure in a designed chip. Because of this there are no chances of replacing the incumbents with open-source tools, at least not in the big established companies that design chips.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >Actually if the IC design tools would be FOSS, the cost of new designs would decrease considerably, even up to two times. There are FOSS IC design tools but nothing that can match Synopsis, Mentor and Cadence and the semi industry isn't gonna start dealing with FOSS jank and destroy their productivity and competitiveness just to save a few milion in licensing costs to those 3 companies, which are peanuts in the end. They're like the John Deer of semi tools, expensive to own and run, but necessary to be competitive and get the most out of this field. Plus, the proprietary stuff is still the standard-cell libraries of TSMC, Samsung, Glo-Fo etc. They will never open source this. >and this perpetuates their monopoly and their ability of extracting huge amounts of money with minimal software development work, Oh, you mean just like Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc?
    - adrian_b 3y ago
      At least Microsoft, Google, Apple etc. do not demand (yet) hundreds of thousands of $ per year for a single license.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        >At least Microsoft, Google, Apple etc. do not demand (yet) hundreds of thousands of $ per year for a single license. Because they sell ads and monetize their users instead, which is a pipe of infinite money. Why does it matter to you how much they're charging? It's not communism. It's their honest labor and they're allowed to charge as much as they want for it, same how you're allowed to ask for as much money as you want for your salary negotiations. So please excuse traditional engineering companies for trying to make a living by monetizing their hard earned IP like every single company out there, and not selling ads like big-tech. The world still needs traditional engineering companies to exist to progress, we can't have a society where everyone only works by selling ads to one another. If you feel like they're price gouging, then feel free to write your own EDA tools and sell them for cheap, I'm sure the market is open to paying much less and saving some money.
        3y ago

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

It wouldn't. HN lives in a SW bubble where Foss is the solution to everything , but fails to see that capital is the main barrier in the semi industry and, unlike their Node library, the secret sauce of cutting edge chips is a matter of national security at this point and will be kept as close to the chest as possible.

adrian_b 3y ago
Actually if the IC design tools would be FOSS, the cost of new designs would decrease considerably, even up to two times. The cost of the subscriptions to the design tools provided by Cadence, Synopsis, Siemens (Mentor) and a few others is ridiculously high and it can contribute with many millions of $ to the design cost of a state-of-the-art chip. The design tools themselves have been improved extremely slowly and they are of a quite low quality for so expensive professional tools. In an open-source environment it would be easy to make much better alternatives. The reason that only a few timid attempts exist to provide alternatives for only some parts of a complete toolchain, is that the semiconductor manufacturers, like TSMC, do not provide public information about the exact data that they need as input for manufacturing, about the design rules that must be implemented for valid designs and about the characteristics of their processes that must be known for simulations. All this information is available only to big companies like Synopsis, Cadence etc. and this perpetuates their monopoly and their ability of extracting huge amounts of money with minimal software development work, from all the companies that design ICs. While the companies that design ICs are not happy for this huge rent that they pay for the design tools, they are also extremely risk-averse and they do not want to make any change in their design workflows, no matter how small, that might increase the risks of failure in a designed chip. Because of this there are no chances of replacing the incumbents with open-source tools, at least not in the big established companies that design chips.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Actually if the IC design tools would be FOSS, the cost of new designs would decrease considerably, even up to two times. There are FOSS IC design tools but nothing that can match Synopsis, Mentor and Cadence and the semi industry isn't gonna start dealing with FOSS jank and destroy their productivity and competitiveness just to save a few milion in licensing costs to those 3 companies, which are peanuts in the end. They're like the John Deer of semi tools, expensive to own and run, but necessary to be competitive and get the most out of this field. Plus, the proprietary stuff is still the standard-cell libraries of TSMC, Samsung, Glo-Fo etc. They will never open source this. >and this perpetuates their monopoly and their ability of extracting huge amounts of money with minimal software development work, Oh, you mean just like Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc?
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    At least Microsoft, Google, Apple etc. do not demand (yet) hundreds of thousands of $ per year for a single license.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >At least Microsoft, Google, Apple etc. do not demand (yet) hundreds of thousands of $ per year for a single license. Because they sell ads and monetize their users instead, which is a pipe of infinite money. Why does it matter to you how much they're charging? It's not communism. It's their honest labor and they're allowed to charge as much as they want for it, same how you're allowed to ask for as much money as you want for your salary negotiations. So please excuse traditional engineering companies for trying to make a living by monetizing their hard earned IP like every single company out there, and not selling ads like big-tech. The world still needs traditional engineering companies to exist to progress, we can't have a society where everyone only works by selling ads to one another. If you feel like they're price gouging, then feel free to write your own EDA tools and sell them for cheap, I'm sure the market is open to paying much less and saving some money.
      - 3y ago