5 ms·

Wasted IC Designs

23 points by kumarski 12y ago

jrockway 12y ago
He probably wouldn't be too happy about the site's ability to handle the HN effect either ;)
- kumarski 12y ago
  I'm very unhappy about this. arghh. Could you post a screenshot if an error appears. Thanks mucho.
  - michaelt 12y ago
    Got this a while ago (may be fixed now) https://imgur.com/ViY80BH https://imgur.com/ViY80BH
    - kumarski 12y ago
      Thank you Michael. :)
adyus 12y ago
While the idea seems interesting, a quick read of this post reveals no connection whatsoever to Tesla. I'm baffled by the title. I wonder if this idea could also be applied to other types of work-intensive designs that simply were ahead of their time and could be resurrected with today's tech, such as car design.
- kumarski 12y ago
  Have you looked at http://localmotors.com http://localmotors.com ? :)
- dang 12y ago
  You're right—the title was linkbait. We changed it in accordance with the HN guidelines.
  - kumarski 12y ago
    It wasn't. One version of the draft of the blog post mentioned Nicola Tesla and his inability to commercialize successfully. I took it out because I thought it detracted. I should have changed the title accordingly.
  - kumarski 12y ago
    / It was linkbait, but not intentionally.
  - kumarski 12y ago
    title corrected to Wasted IC Designs.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- sitkack 12y ago
  I don't know the specifics of patent law, but can existing physical items be reproduced wholesale or is just the concept behind the creation? Can I make an atom for atom reproduction of 1980 Porsche 911 and sell it on the open market (removing the name of course)?
  - adyus 12y ago
    I believe there was some scandal on this exact topic in South America, a shop was making unbranded, identical body copies of exotic cars and had the law come crashing on them. Regardless, it could be a good idea to offer this service to the original patent holder. It would offer them a chance to recover sunken costs.
    - sitkack 12y ago
      I found this, http://www.ipo.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ExhaustionandRighttoCopyPTOSversio030907.pdf http://www.ipo.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ExhaustionandR... Which makes it sound like making exact reproductions is completely legal. Which is exactly what I would think. If you patent a drug, there is no other representation of thing. A molecule is a molecule. Although I do see a tricky subversion of patent law where one would attempt to get copyright woven intricately into the fabric of the invention to get 70 years past the death of the artist (corporation). hypothetical: "I am sorry that was not a novel single cycle divider circuit that exact representation of gates is a new Piet Mondrian!"
solarmist 12y ago
Site's rate limiting. Can anyone describe what this is?
sp332 12y ago
Cache http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.kumar.vc/tesla-would-cry-about-these-ic-designs/&strip=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://... Edit: The pictures are still loading even though the blog is down.
yongjik 12y ago
I'm ignorant on IC designs, but this whole post sounds like a big "solution in search of a problem" to me. Could someone enlighten us on whether there are really enough abandoned IC designs that are economically viable?
- kumarski 12y ago
  The idea is that there's 10-20 percent of useful IC designs. Additionally, efabless provides the environment to design, test, and simulate the IC with respect to the foundry/fab.
  - kumarski 12y ago
    I should have probably outlined why it's meaningful, or why I'm taking a risk on it. - IC design software as it currently stands has no version control. (I was shocked at this...) - IC designs are built in a closed box. - There's an absurdly high level of unsellable designs. This occurs because there's no customer feedback loop and you can't predict the direction of the IC market. Additionally, I'm pretty stoked about things like: prefundia.com kickstarter.com Because... they mitigate production risk. The cost of failure in IC design is pretty big. Efabless gives away the software part of it for free to IC designers.
    - ChuckMcM 12y ago
      This doesn't really match my understanding of things, this is what I'm familiar with. IC design software is too loose a term. Most, if not all, integrated circuits are designed these days using a hardware description language (VHDL and Verilog being most popular) and those languages/files have exactly the same level of source code control that any source code does, git, mercurial, CVS, etc. They are just text files, they have a build and a test processes. Further integrated circuits can be collaboratively designed, look at FPGACPU.org as an interesting example. This one is really hard to wrap my head around: CLAIM: There is an absurdly high level of unsalable designs. EVIDENCE: This occurs because there's no customer feedback loop and you can't predict the direction of the IC market. Bad chip designs exist for the same reason that bad software exists, some people just produce bad designs. I think you were trying to argue that there are good designs that didn't get produced, but that is true for any design. So that said lets talk about what is hard. It is hard for me, as an individual, to get a wafer start at a fab. It is hard for me as an individual to generate masks for a specific process. It is hard for me, as an individual, to get the circuit parameters for a particular process and so that I can do both a good layout and can tweak my masks for good yield. It is hard for me, as an individual, to get my processed wafers diced, tested, and packaged. Historically, getting all of those things done to convert a working chip design from simulation to testable parts, has been a few million dollars. And at the end of those millions one has (wafer size / die size ) * layout efficency * process yield * testing yield number of parts. These are divided up into one or more 'bins' (if they are still usable at different frequencies or voltages). And when I divide that number of chips by the amount of money I've spent, I've got a price per chip that has to be something the market will be willing to pay. That is both a lot of hoops, and sitting down for betting one round costs a few million. So what, exactly, is efabless.com de-risking? Unlike circuit boards, you can't easily put several different IC designs on the same chip and expect a fixed yield across them (sort of the OSHPark model). You can do what some folks have done which is buy "excess" capacity on older generation fabs (like Atmel's) and get a discount because you're helping them keep things running, but its still quite expensive. The cost of failure in IC design is nearly zero. Once you've done the simulations you've just burned CPU cycles up to that point. If the process is well characterized there is exactly zero reason for a chip you produce to not work when it comes out the other end. A long time friend from my Intel days remarked that it used to be news if a chip worked the first time, now it is news if it doesn't work the first time you bake it. I can see a challenge that low run rate chips are too expensive for the market they are trying to serve (which is why FPGAs have been growing in leaps and bounds). The original solution, ASICs which are less space efficient than bespoke designs are great for taking an FPGA design into production. So the modern "chip" process has evolved to design it, ship your MVP on FPGAs, if you get sufficient traction you do a two or three metal layer ASIC, if you get even more traction you plug in the process design library and do layout for a specific process. Where does efabless fit into that?
nkurz 12y ago
Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.kumar.vc%2Ftesla-would-cry-about-these-ic-designs%2F http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.k... I presume he means Nikola Tesla (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla) rather than the electric car company (http://www.teslamotors.com http://www.teslamotors.com), but I still don't understand the reference. Is there more to it than the general notion than Mr. Tesla had many ideas that never reached fruition?
- kumarski 12y ago
  I had an anecdote about the failure prone nature of IC design and Tesla's failed commercialization attempts.
sitkack 12y ago
The company that the post mentions, EFabless, has an HN instance setup for IC related news. http://clktok.efabless.com/ http://clktok.efabless.com/
- arbuge 12y ago
  Is the HN software available to third parties then?
  - kumarski 12y ago
    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4285617/how-do-i-install-arc-to-get-a-hacker-news-clone-website http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4285617/how-do-i-install-...
    - sitkack 12y ago
      Although for nearly the same effort one can get reddit up and running, https://github.com/reddit/reddit https://github.com/reddit/reddit And then with http://redditenhancementsuite.com/ http://redditenhancementsuite.com/ one has a pretty good app.
bsder 12y ago
This doesn't fix IC design. The fix to IC design is simple: Free design tools. Without free tools, you can't "carry" a design until it becomes economically viable because you have to pay Cadence/Mentor/etc. continuously. The problem is that the number of people who can make such tools borders on zero to begin with. Combine that with the fact that most companies will pay you quite a bit if you are that good at ECAD programming, and you basically have no programmers available. (For a good example, look at the state of free PCB tools vs the ones you buy. VLSI is at least an order of magnitude few users and programmers than THAT.)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - kumarski 12y ago
    / that's what efabless offers and more..
- kumarski 12y ago
  These are free.
  - bsder 12y ago
    And where can I download these tools? This isn't free. You are attempting to extract rent from already cost-sunk designs rather than enabling a blossoming of new design ecosystem.
    - kumarski 12y ago
      Not yet downloadable. This is free. Okay, let's suppose you want to create an IC from scratch, we'll support that too and allow you to use our design ecosystem for free too. Simply message me.

Wasted IC Designs

23 points by kumarski 12y ago

jrockway 12y ago

He probably wouldn't be too happy about the site's ability to handle the HN effect either ;)

kumarski 12y ago
I'm very unhappy about this. arghh. Could you post a screenshot if an error appears. Thanks mucho.
- michaelt 12y ago
  Got this a while ago (may be fixed now) https://imgur.com/ViY80BH https://imgur.com/ViY80BH
  - kumarski 12y ago
    Thank you Michael. :)

adyus 12y ago

While the idea seems interesting, a quick read of this post reveals no connection whatsoever to Tesla. I'm baffled by the title. I wonder if this idea could also be applied to other types of work-intensive designs that simply were ahead of their time and could be resurrected with today's tech, such as car design.

kumarski 12y ago
Have you looked at http://localmotors.com http://localmotors.com ? :)
dang 12y ago
You're right—the title was linkbait. We changed it in accordance with the HN guidelines.
- kumarski 12y ago
  It wasn't. One version of the draft of the blog post mentioned Nicola Tesla and his inability to commercialize successfully. I took it out because I thought it detracted. I should have changed the title accordingly.
- kumarski 12y ago
  / It was linkbait, but not intentionally.
- kumarski 12y ago
  title corrected to Wasted IC Designs.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
sitkack 12y ago
I don't know the specifics of patent law, but can existing physical items be reproduced wholesale or is just the concept behind the creation? Can I make an atom for atom reproduction of 1980 Porsche 911 and sell it on the open market (removing the name of course)?
- adyus 12y ago
  I believe there was some scandal on this exact topic in South America, a shop was making unbranded, identical body copies of exotic cars and had the law come crashing on them. Regardless, it could be a good idea to offer this service to the original patent holder. It would offer them a chance to recover sunken costs.
  - sitkack 12y ago
    I found this, http://www.ipo.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ExhaustionandRighttoCopyPTOSversio030907.pdf http://www.ipo.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ExhaustionandR... Which makes it sound like making exact reproductions is completely legal. Which is exactly what I would think. If you patent a drug, there is no other representation of thing. A molecule is a molecule. Although I do see a tricky subversion of patent law where one would attempt to get copyright woven intricately into the fabric of the invention to get 70 years past the death of the artist (corporation). hypothetical: "I am sorry that was not a novel single cycle divider circuit that exact representation of gates is a new Piet Mondrian!"

solarmist 12y ago

Site's rate limiting. Can anyone describe what this is?

sp332 12y ago

Cache http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.kumar.vc/tesla-would-cry-about-these-ic-designs/&strip=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://... Edit: The pictures are still loading even though the blog is down.

yongjik 12y ago

I'm ignorant on IC designs, but this whole post sounds like a big "solution in search of a problem" to me. Could someone enlighten us on whether there are really enough abandoned IC designs that are economically viable?

kumarski 12y ago
The idea is that there's 10-20 percent of useful IC designs. Additionally, efabless provides the environment to design, test, and simulate the IC with respect to the foundry/fab.
- kumarski 12y ago
  I should have probably outlined why it's meaningful, or why I'm taking a risk on it. - IC design software as it currently stands has no version control. (I was shocked at this...) - IC designs are built in a closed box. - There's an absurdly high level of unsellable designs. This occurs because there's no customer feedback loop and you can't predict the direction of the IC market. Additionally, I'm pretty stoked about things like: prefundia.com kickstarter.com Because... they mitigate production risk. The cost of failure in IC design is pretty big. Efabless gives away the software part of it for free to IC designers.
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    This doesn't really match my understanding of things, this is what I'm familiar with. IC design software is too loose a term. Most, if not all, integrated circuits are designed these days using a hardware description language (VHDL and Verilog being most popular) and those languages/files have exactly the same level of source code control that any source code does, git, mercurial, CVS, etc. They are just text files, they have a build and a test processes. Further integrated circuits can be collaboratively designed, look at FPGACPU.org as an interesting example. This one is really hard to wrap my head around: CLAIM: There is an absurdly high level of unsalable designs. EVIDENCE: This occurs because there's no customer feedback loop and you can't predict the direction of the IC market. Bad chip designs exist for the same reason that bad software exists, some people just produce bad designs. I think you were trying to argue that there are good designs that didn't get produced, but that is true for any design. So that said lets talk about what is hard. It is hard for me, as an individual, to get a wafer start at a fab. It is hard for me as an individual to generate masks for a specific process. It is hard for me, as an individual, to get the circuit parameters for a particular process and so that I can do both a good layout and can tweak my masks for good yield. It is hard for me, as an individual, to get my processed wafers diced, tested, and packaged. Historically, getting all of those things done to convert a working chip design from simulation to testable parts, has been a few million dollars. And at the end of those millions one has (wafer size / die size ) * layout efficency * process yield * testing yield number of parts. These are divided up into one or more 'bins' (if they are still usable at different frequencies or voltages). And when I divide that number of chips by the amount of money I've spent, I've got a price per chip that has to be something the market will be willing to pay. That is both a lot of hoops, and sitting down for betting one round costs a few million. So what, exactly, is efabless.com de-risking? Unlike circuit boards, you can't easily put several different IC designs on the same chip and expect a fixed yield across them (sort of the OSHPark model). You can do what some folks have done which is buy "excess" capacity on older generation fabs (like Atmel's) and get a discount because you're helping them keep things running, but its still quite expensive. The cost of failure in IC design is nearly zero. Once you've done the simulations you've just burned CPU cycles up to that point. If the process is well characterized there is exactly zero reason for a chip you produce to not work when it comes out the other end. A long time friend from my Intel days remarked that it used to be news if a chip worked the first time, now it is news if it doesn't work the first time you bake it. I can see a challenge that low run rate chips are too expensive for the market they are trying to serve (which is why FPGAs have been growing in leaps and bounds). The original solution, ASICs which are less space efficient than bespoke designs are great for taking an FPGA design into production. So the modern "chip" process has evolved to design it, ship your MVP on FPGAs, if you get sufficient traction you do a two or three metal layer ASIC, if you get even more traction you plug in the process design library and do layout for a specific process. Where does efabless fit into that?

nkurz 12y ago

Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.kumar.vc%2Ftesla-would-cry-about-these-ic-designs%2F http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.k... I presume he means Nikola Tesla (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla) rather than the electric car company (http://www.teslamotors.com http://www.teslamotors.com), but I still don't understand the reference. Is there more to it than the general notion than Mr. Tesla had many ideas that never reached fruition?

kumarski 12y ago
I had an anecdote about the failure prone nature of IC design and Tesla's failed commercialization attempts.

sitkack 12y ago

The company that the post mentions, EFabless, has an HN instance setup for IC related news. http://clktok.efabless.com/ http://clktok.efabless.com/

arbuge 12y ago
Is the HN software available to third parties then?
- kumarski 12y ago
  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4285617/how-do-i-install-arc-to-get-a-hacker-news-clone-website http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4285617/how-do-i-install-...
  - sitkack 12y ago
    Although for nearly the same effort one can get reddit up and running, https://github.com/reddit/reddit https://github.com/reddit/reddit And then with http://redditenhancementsuite.com/ http://redditenhancementsuite.com/ one has a pretty good app.

bsder 12y ago

This doesn't fix IC design. The fix to IC design is simple: Free design tools. Without free tools, you can't "carry" a design until it becomes economically viable because you have to pay Cadence/Mentor/etc. continuously. The problem is that the number of people who can make such tools borders on zero to begin with. Combine that with the fact that most companies will pay you quite a bit if you are that good at ECAD programming, and you basically have no programmers available. (For a good example, look at the state of free PCB tools vs the ones you buy. VLSI is at least an order of magnitude few users and programmers than THAT.)

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- kumarski 12y ago
  / that's what efabless offers and more..
kumarski 12y ago
These are free.
- bsder 12y ago
  And where can I download these tools? This isn't free. You are attempting to extract rent from already cost-sunk designs rather than enabling a blossoming of new design ecosystem.
  - kumarski 12y ago
    Not yet downloadable. This is free. Okay, let's suppose you want to create an IC from scratch, we'll support that too and allow you to use our design ecosystem for free too. Simply message me.