bit about transistor cost...

[server]

https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.



--

Father Brown\'s figure remained quite dark and still;
but in that instant he had lost his head. His head was
always most valuable when he had lost it.

 

[Rick C]

On Monday, December 6, 2021 at 12:44:06 PM UTC-5, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.

\"If they weren\'t so good, why would I buy so many?\" Anyone remember that Volvo ad?

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Dimiter_Popoff]

On 12/6/2021 19:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.

Gradually electronics design without having access to a silicon factory
becomes useless, hopefully the process is slow enough so we don\'t see
that in full.
Sort of like nowadays you can somehow master an internal combustion
engine if you have a lathe and a milling machine but you have no chance
to make it comparable to those car makers make, not to speak about cost.

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 20:36:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com>
wrote:

On 12/6/2021 19:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.




Gradually electronics design without having access to a silicon factory
becomes useless, hopefully the process is slow enough so we don\'t see
that in full.
Sort of like nowadays you can somehow master an internal combustion
engine if you have a lathe and a milling machine but you have no chance
to make it comparable to those car makers make, not to speak about cost.

Some things have got good enough. Hammers, spoons, beds, LED lights,
microwave ovens. Moore\'s Law can\'t go on forever, and is probably at
or in same cases past its practical limit.

We don\'t need 3 nm chips to text and twitter. I can\'t imagine my cell
phone needing to be better hardware.

I need a dumb, last-gen FPGA that is less fancy inside but fast
pin-to-pin. The trend is in the opposite directions.

Maybe Moore\'s law is running on psychological momentum, fear of
getting behind. I think I can see that happening.



--

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end with doubts,
but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon

 

[Dimiter_Popoff]

On 12/6/2021 20:47, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 20:36:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 12/6/2021 19:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.




Gradually electronics design without having access to a silicon factory
becomes useless, hopefully the process is slow enough so we don\'t see
that in full.
Sort of like nowadays you can somehow master an internal combustion
engine if you have a lathe and a milling machine but you have no chance
to make it comparable to those car makers make, not to speak about cost.

Some things have got good enough. Hammers, spoons, beds, LED lights,
microwave ovens. Moore\'s Law can\'t go on forever, and is probably at
or in same cases past its practical limit.

We don\'t need 3 nm chips to text and twitter. I can\'t imagine my cell
phone needing to be better hardware.

Oh they have already bloated the software so the need for todays
(and way back from today) hardware would be there. Just have faith,
they\'ll manage it for 3 nm if say TSMC get there.

I need a dumb, last-gen FPGA that is less fancy inside but fast
pin-to-pin. The trend is in the opposite directions.

I get this obviously, I have similar needs (not yet your ps thing
but for how long).
But this is my point, so you can make what you want to make you
will need access to a silicon factory... Clearly you can do better
if you design your silicon instead of tweaking an fpga. However
this is unlikely to become a viable alternative simply because of
cost - and well, only the large ones will be allowed to design.
Does not get much shittier than that (not just for the likes of us)
but this is where the world is heading.

Maybe Moore\'s law is running on psychological momentum, fear of
getting behind. I think I can see that happening.

I don\'t give that much thought, I think it is gone since the clock
frequencies for processors etc. stopped getting higher but I am
neither sure not interested in what exacltly that \"law\" means.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

Dimiter_Popoff wrote:

On 12/6/2021 20:47, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 20:36:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 12/6/2021 19:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.




Gradually electronics design without having access to a silicon factory
becomes useless, hopefully the process is slow enough so we don\'t see
that in full.
Sort of like nowadays you can somehow master an internal combustion
engine if you have a lathe and a milling machine but you have no chance
to make it comparable to those car makers make, not to speak about cost.

Some things have got good enough. Hammers, spoons, beds, LED lights,
microwave ovens. Moore\'s Law can\'t go on forever, and is probably at
or in same cases past its practical limit.

We don\'t need 3 nm chips to text and twitter. I can\'t imagine my cell
phone needing to be better hardware.

Oh they have already bloated the software so the need for todays
(and way back from today) hardware would be there. Just have faith,
they\'ll manage it for 3 nm if say TSMC get there.


I need a dumb, last-gen FPGA that is less fancy inside but fast
pin-to-pin. The trend is in the opposite directions.

I get this obviously, I have similar needs (not yet your ps thing
but for how long).
But this is my point, so you can make what you want to make you
will need access to a silicon factory... Clearly you can do better
if you design your silicon instead of tweaking an fpga.

Depends. There are very few applications that will support the sheer
NRE cost of a full custom chip down at single-nanometer nodes.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 14:21:23 -0500, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 12/6/2021 20:47, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 20:36:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 12/6/2021 19:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.




Gradually electronics design without having access to a silicon factory
becomes useless, hopefully the process is slow enough so we don\'t see
that in full.
Sort of like nowadays you can somehow master an internal combustion
engine if you have a lathe and a milling machine but you have no chance
to make it comparable to those car makers make, not to speak about cost.

Some things have got good enough. Hammers, spoons, beds, LED lights,
microwave ovens. Moore\'s Law can\'t go on forever, and is probably at
or in same cases past its practical limit.

We don\'t need 3 nm chips to text and twitter. I can\'t imagine my cell
phone needing to be better hardware.

Oh they have already bloated the software so the need for todays
(and way back from today) hardware would be there. Just have faith,
they\'ll manage it for 3 nm if say TSMC get there.


I need a dumb, last-gen FPGA that is less fancy inside but fast
pin-to-pin. The trend is in the opposite directions.

I get this obviously, I have similar needs (not yet your ps thing
but for how long).
But this is my point, so you can make what you want to make you
will need access to a silicon factory... Clearly you can do better
if you design your silicon instead of tweaking an fpga.

Depends. There are very few applications that will support the sheer
NRE cost of a full custom chip down at single-nanometer nodes.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I can imagine some serious head slapping when someone finds a fatal
flaw in this mask set.



--

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end with doubts,
but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon

 

[Dimiter_Popoff]

On 12/6/2021 21:48, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 14:21:23 -0500, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 12/6/2021 20:47, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 20:36:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 12/6/2021 19:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.




Gradually electronics design without having access to a silicon factory
becomes useless, hopefully the process is slow enough so we don\'t see
that in full.
Sort of like nowadays you can somehow master an internal combustion
engine if you have a lathe and a milling machine but you have no chance
to make it comparable to those car makers make, not to speak about cost.

Some things have got good enough. Hammers, spoons, beds, LED lights,
microwave ovens. Moore\'s Law can\'t go on forever, and is probably at
or in same cases past its practical limit.

We don\'t need 3 nm chips to text and twitter. I can\'t imagine my cell
phone needing to be better hardware.

Oh they have already bloated the software so the need for todays
(and way back from today) hardware would be there. Just have faith,
they\'ll manage it for 3 nm if say TSMC get there.


I need a dumb, last-gen FPGA that is less fancy inside but fast
pin-to-pin. The trend is in the opposite directions.

I get this obviously, I have similar needs (not yet your ps thing
but for how long).
But this is my point, so you can make what you want to make you
will need access to a silicon factory... Clearly you can do better
if you design your silicon instead of tweaking an fpga.

Depends. There are very few applications that will support the sheer
NRE cost of a full custom chip down at single-nanometer nodes.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I can imagine some serious head slapping when someone finds a fatal
flaw in this mask set.

Welcome to the future . Like I said before, I just hope I don\'t live
long enough to be part of it.

 

[Rick C]

On Monday, December 6, 2021 at 1:47:47 PM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 20:36:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <d...@tgi-sci.com
wrote:
On 12/6/2021 19:42, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.




Gradually electronics design without having access to a silicon factory
becomes useless, hopefully the process is slow enough so we don\'t see
that in full.
Sort of like nowadays you can somehow master an internal combustion
engine if you have a lathe and a milling machine but you have no chance
to make it comparable to those car makers make, not to speak about cost.
Some things have got good enough. Hammers, spoons, beds, LED lights,
microwave ovens. Moore\'s Law can\'t go on forever, and is probably at
or in same cases past its practical limit.

We don\'t need 3 nm chips to text and twitter. I can\'t imagine my cell
phone needing to be better hardware.

Your imagination is very limited. I\'d like my phone to be a LOT faster and use less power. Both of those things are what drives semiconductor advances. I\'d like my laptop to run as fast as now or faster, but using less power so the battery lasts longer.

I need a dumb, last-gen FPGA that is less fancy inside but fast
pin-to-pin. The trend is in the opposite directions.

??? FPGAs, like most semiconductors, run faster as they shrink the feature sizes. There are companies that address the low end. Try Gowin and I believe Renesas, who bought Dialog is offering small FPGAs although I don\'t know how fast.

Like with many devices, if you aren\'t going to buy millions, you are invisible to the companies providing the product.

Maybe Moore\'s law is running on psychological momentum, fear of
getting behind. I think I can see that happening.

LOL! You are so funny sometimes. I guess the companies that are slower to adopt new technology actually make more profit. Then they get the money to play catch up and make less money again. Yeah, that\'s a thing.

I suppose that fits with your philosophy that everyone who doesn\'t think like you is an idiot no matter how successful they are.

--

Rick C.

+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Martin Brown]

On 06/12/2021 19:04, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:

On 12/6/2021 20:47, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 20:36:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 12/6/2021 19:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.

Gradually electronics design without having access to a silicon factory
becomes useless, hopefully the process is slow enough so we don\'t see
that in full.
Sort of like nowadays you can somehow master an internal combustion
engine if you have a lathe and a milling machine but you have no chance
to make it comparable to those car makers make, not to speak about cost.

Some things have got good enough. Hammers, spoons, beds, LED lights,
microwave ovens. Moore\'s Law can\'t go on forever, and is probably at
or in same cases past its practical limit.

We don\'t need 3 nm chips to text and twitter. I can\'t imagine my cell
phone needing to be better hardware.

I would like a *lot* more battery life - the speed is more than
adequate for my needs. I\'d trade slower when idle for longer life.

Likewise with PC\'s. I\'m in the market for a new one right now but I\'m
not convinced that any of them offer single threaded performance that is
3x better than the ancient i7-3770 I have now. That has always been my
upgrade heuristic (used to be every 3 years). Clock speeds have maxed
out and now they are adding more cores (many of which are idle most of
the time). Performance cores and efficient cores is the new selling
point. It looks on paper like the i5-12600K might just pass this test.

Oh they have already bloated the software so the need for todays
(and way back from today) hardware would be there. Just have faith,
they\'ll manage it for 3 nm if say TSMC get there.

Software will always grow to use the memory and speed available.
CPU cycles are cheap and getting cheaper and humans are expensive.

IBM claim to have 2nm chip fab technology as of this year.

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2021-05-06-IBM-Unveils-Worlds-First-2-Nanometer-Chip-Technology,-Opening-a-New-Frontier-for-Semiconductors#assets_all

I need a dumb, last-gen FPGA that is less fancy inside but fast
pin-to-pin. The trend is in the opposite directions.

I get this obviously, I have similar needs (not yet your ps thing
but for how long).
But this is my point, so you can make what you want to make you
will need access to a silicon factory... Clearly you can do better
if you design your silicon instead of tweaking an fpga. However
this is unlikely to become a viable alternative simply because of
cost - and well, only the large ones will be allowed to design.
Does not get much shittier than that (not just for the likes of us)
but this is where the world is heading.

It may yet swing the other way when simulations are so good that the
conversion to masks is essentially error free. Where it gets tricky is
when the AI is designing new chips for us that no-one understands.

This years BBC Rieth lectures are about the rise of AI and the future by
Stuart Russell of Berkley (starts this Wednesday).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1N0w5NcK27Tt041LPVLZ51k/reith-lectures-2021-living-with-artificial-intelligence

Maybe Moore\'s law is running on psychological momentum, fear of
getting behind. I think I can see that happening.

It is still at least partially holding for number density of transistors
if not for actual computing performance. We must be very close to the
limits where quantum effects mess things up (but 3D stacks allow some
alternative ways of gaining number density on a chip).

I don\'t give that much thought, I think it is gone since the clock
frequencies for processors etc. stopped getting higher but I am
neither sure not interested in what exacltly that \"law\" means.

It was originally specified in terms of transistors per chip.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Phil Hobbs]

John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 14:21:23 -0500, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 12/6/2021 20:47, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 20:36:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 12/6/2021 19:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.




Gradually electronics design without having access to a silicon factory
becomes useless, hopefully the process is slow enough so we don\'t see
that in full.
Sort of like nowadays you can somehow master an internal combustion
engine if you have a lathe and a milling machine but you have no chance
to make it comparable to those car makers make, not to speak about cost.

Some things have got good enough. Hammers, spoons, beds, LED lights,
microwave ovens. Moore\'s Law can\'t go on forever, and is probably at
or in same cases past its practical limit.

We don\'t need 3 nm chips to text and twitter. I can\'t imagine my cell
phone needing to be better hardware.

Oh they have already bloated the software so the need for todays
(and way back from today) hardware would be there. Just have faith,
they\'ll manage it for 3 nm if say TSMC get there.


I need a dumb, last-gen FPGA that is less fancy inside but fast
pin-to-pin. The trend is in the opposite directions.

I get this obviously, I have similar needs (not yet your ps thing
but for how long).
But this is my point, so you can make what you want to make you
will need access to a silicon factory... Clearly you can do better
if you design your silicon instead of tweaking an fpga.

Depends. There are very few applications that will support the sheer
NRE cost of a full custom chip down at single-nanometer nodes.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I can imagine some serious head slapping when someone finds a fatal
flaw in this mask set.

They can be edited, up to a point. Dunno how easy that is for a < 10-nm
mask though.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[whit3rd]

On Monday, December 6, 2021 at 10:30:28 AM UTC-8, gnuarm.del...@gmail.com wrote:

On Monday, December 6, 2021 at 12:44:06 PM UTC-5, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.

\"If they weren\'t so good, why would I buy so many?\" Anyone remember that Volvo ad?

Part of the problem, is that those chips go into disposables. Auto computers are wedded
to one particular model and option set of auto, cannot be easily made generic replaceables.
PC high tech components are churned into landfills on circa 5 year timescales.
Cellphone processing is even less open; my service provider is now nagging me to do
yet another upgrade of my pocketable. Tablets, same story.

RAMBUS-memory motherboards got recycled lots sooner than most owners liked.

Face it, we buy many because we can\'t repurpose the old ones. The future of high-tech
LSI CPUs is to go into NUC or MacMini disposables, or server-class boxes that die of
energy effiiciency issues, and even the socketed RAM is the wrong generation for their
replacements. Power cords, RETMA racks, we reuse; no shortages there.

Maybe, someday, auto networks will accept generic plug-ins, and an auto chassis can
expect a lifespan that goes longer than the lifespan of its irreplaceable data-handling bits.
And, maybe I can cluster old PCs, with ethernet, and using NAS disks...

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

mandag den 6. december 2021 kl. 23.00.57 UTC+1 skrev Phil Hobbs:

John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 14:21:23 -0500, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamM...@electrooptical.net> wrote:

Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 12/6/2021 20:47, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 20:36:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <d...@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 12/6/2021 19:42, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.




Gradually electronics design without having access to a silicon factory
becomes useless, hopefully the process is slow enough so we don\'t see
that in full.
Sort of like nowadays you can somehow master an internal combustion
engine if you have a lathe and a milling machine but you have no chance
to make it comparable to those car makers make, not to speak about cost.

Some things have got good enough. Hammers, spoons, beds, LED lights,
microwave ovens. Moore\'s Law can\'t go on forever, and is probably at
or in same cases past its practical limit.

We don\'t need 3 nm chips to text and twitter. I can\'t imagine my cell
phone needing to be better hardware.

Oh they have already bloated the software so the need for todays
(and way back from today) hardware would be there. Just have faith,
they\'ll manage it for 3 nm if say TSMC get there.


I need a dumb, last-gen FPGA that is less fancy inside but fast
pin-to-pin. The trend is in the opposite directions.

I get this obviously, I have similar needs (not yet your ps thing
but for how long).
But this is my point, so you can make what you want to make you
will need access to a silicon factory... Clearly you can do better
if you design your silicon instead of tweaking an fpga.

Depends. There are very few applications that will support the sheer
NRE cost of a full custom chip down at single-nanometer nodes.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I can imagine some serious head slapping when someone finds a fatal
flaw in this mask set.



They can be edited, up to a point. Dunno how easy that is for a < 10-nm
mask though.

afaik there is a lot of masks to a chip and you can change only some of them

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 4:44:06 AM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.

Semiconductor manufacturing is all about producing chips that have mass market applications and can sell in huge numbers into the relevant mass market

If you have a big enough market to pay for the next generation euv-scanner and the billion dollar mask set required for the chip that will dominate that market, it is a great investment.

The rest of us exploit those chips to serve different - smaller, but more numerous - markets. We don\'t need few-nm chips to do that, but if we can buy one more or less suitable for our application, we will do it, because it\'s going to be faster and use less current than it\'s predecessor. The interface to produce the outputs we can sell is always a mess, but it\'s been like that forever.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 12:14:43 PM UTC+11, Martin Brown wrote:

On 06/12/2021 19:04, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 12/6/2021 20:47, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 20:36:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <d...@tgi-sci.com> wrote:
On 12/6/2021 19:42, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

<snip>

> It may yet swing the other way when simulations are so good that the conversion to masks is essentially error free.

That happened around 1990. The electron beam tester I was working on back then was the next generation of a unit which famously trimmed three months off the development time of the Motorola 68k processor chip set.

The project wasn\'t canned because out machine didn\'t work - we did get it working quite well enough to demonstrate that it was an order of magnitude faster than it\'s predecessor - but because simulation had got good enough that most mask sets produced chips that worked.

The older, slower, machines were quite fast enough to check out that the simulation software was predicting what actually happened on the chip and that killed our market.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Sylvia Else]

On 07-Dec-21 12:14 pm, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

On Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 4:44:06 AM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.

Semiconductor manufacturing is all about producing chips that have mass market applications and can sell in huge numbers into the relevant mass market

If you have a big enough market to pay for the next generation euv-scanner and the billion dollar mask set required for the chip that will dominate that market, it is a great investment.

The rest of us exploit those chips to serve different - smaller, but more numerous - markets. We don\'t need few-nm chips to do that, but if we can buy one more or less suitable for our application, we will do it, because it\'s going to be faster and use less current than it\'s predecessor. The interface to produce the outputs we can sell is always a mess, but it\'s been like that forever.

A few nm is not many silicon atoms, so I have to wonder about the
longevity of these chips.

People generally may recycle their phones every couple of years (though
I don\'t), and manufacturers may be willing just to replace those that
die during the warranty period, but for most things one wants the
electronics to work for a reasonable time.

Sylvia.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:

mandag den 6. december 2021 kl. 23.00.57 UTC+1 skrev Phil Hobbs:
John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 14:21:23 -0500, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamM...@electrooptical.net> wrote:

Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 12/6/2021 20:47, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 20:36:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <d...@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 12/6/2021 19:42, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.




Gradually electronics design without having access to a silicon factory
becomes useless, hopefully the process is slow enough so we don\'t see
that in full.
Sort of like nowadays you can somehow master an internal combustion
engine if you have a lathe and a milling machine but you have no chance
to make it comparable to those car makers make, not to speak about cost.

Some things have got good enough. Hammers, spoons, beds, LED lights,
microwave ovens. Moore\'s Law can\'t go on forever, and is probably at
or in same cases past its practical limit.

We don\'t need 3 nm chips to text and twitter. I can\'t imagine my cell
phone needing to be better hardware.

Oh they have already bloated the software so the need for todays
(and way back from today) hardware would be there. Just have faith,
they\'ll manage it for 3 nm if say TSMC get there.


I need a dumb, last-gen FPGA that is less fancy inside but fast
pin-to-pin. The trend is in the opposite directions.

I get this obviously, I have similar needs (not yet your ps thing
but for how long).
But this is my point, so you can make what you want to make you
will need access to a silicon factory... Clearly you can do better
if you design your silicon instead of tweaking an fpga.

Depends. There are very few applications that will support the sheer
NRE cost of a full custom chip down at single-nanometer nodes.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I can imagine some serious head slapping when someone finds a fatal
flaw in this mask set.



They can be edited, up to a point. Dunno how easy that is for a < 10-nm
mask though.

afaik there is a lot of masks to a chip and you can change only some of them

Well, if you\'ve got 13 metal layers, various ion implant steps, and so
on and so forth, plus 8-exposure litho for the fine stuff, that can add
up, for sure.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Dimiter_Popoff]

On 12/6/2021 23:34, Martin Brown wrote:

On 06/12/2021 19:04, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 12/6/2021 20:47, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 20:36:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com
wrote:

On 12/6/2021 19:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.

Gradually electronics design without having access to a silicon factory
becomes useless, hopefully the process is slow enough so we don\'t see
that in full.
Sort of like nowadays you can somehow master an internal combustion
engine if you have a lathe and a milling machine but you have no chance
to make it comparable to those car makers make, not to speak about
cost.

Some things have got good enough. Hammers, spoons, beds, LED lights,
microwave ovens. Moore\'s Law can\'t go on forever, and is probably at
or in same cases past its practical limit.

We don\'t need 3 nm chips to text and twitter. I can\'t imagine my cell
phone needing to be better hardware.

I would like a *lot* more battery life - the speed is more than adequate
for my needs. I\'d trade slower when idle for longer life.

Likewise with PC\'s. I\'m in the market for a new one right now but I\'m
not convinced that any of them offer single threaded performance that is
3x better than the ancient i7-3770 I have now. That has always been my
upgrade heuristic (used to be every 3 years). Clock speeds have maxed
out and now they are adding more cores (many of which are idle most of
the time). Performance cores and efficient cores is the new selling
point. It looks on paper like the i5-12600K might just pass this test.

Oh they have already bloated the software so the need for todays
(and way back from today) hardware would be there. Just have faith,
they\'ll manage it for 3 nm if say TSMC get there.

Software will always grow to use the memory and speed available.
CPU cycles are cheap and getting cheaper and humans are expensive.

IBM claim to have 2nm chip fab technology as of this year.

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2021-05-06-IBM-Unveils-Worlds-First-2-Nanometer-Chip-Technology,-Opening-a-New-Frontier-for-Semiconductors#assets_all

Actually I think I had seen that of IBM... and had forgotten.
I am not sure software just grows to saturate the hardware
(which it of course does, we all do it). Sometimes I think they
bloat it on purpose in order to have the market for the next
generation of silicon (not that this is a bad thing, better
silicon is welcome, just the secrecy about it is not). Or may
be it is not \"on purpose\" in some sinister conspiracy-like way,
may be it just regulates itself like this. But the software is
*way* too bloated for me to just disregard the conspiracy idea...

I need a dumb, last-gen FPGA that is less fancy inside but fast
pin-to-pin. The trend is in the opposite directions.

I get this obviously, I have similar needs (not yet your ps thing
but for how long).
But this is my point, so you can make what you want to make you
will need access to a silicon factory... Clearly you can do better
if you design your silicon instead of tweaking an fpga. However
this is unlikely to become a viable alternative simply because of
cost - and well, only the large ones will be allowed to design.
Does not get much shittier than that (not just for the likes of us)
but this is where the world is heading.

It may yet swing the other way when simulations are so good that the
conversion to masks is essentially error free. Where it gets tricky is
when the AI is designing new chips for us that no-one understands.

This years BBC Rieth lectures are about the rise of AI and the future by
Stuart Russell of Berkley (starts this Wednesday).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1N0w5NcK27Tt041LPVLZ51k/reith-lectures-2021-living-with-artificial-intelligence


Maybe Moore\'s law is running on psychological momentum, fear of
getting behind. I think I can see that happening.

It is still at least partially holding for number density of transistors
if not for actual computing performance. We must be very close to the
limits where quantum effects mess things up (but 3D stacks allow some
alternative ways of gaining number density on a chip).

I don\'t give that much thought, I think it is gone since the clock
frequencies for processors etc. stopped getting higher but I am
neither sure not interested in what exacltly that \"law\" means.

It was originally specified in terms of transistors per chip.

So it may still be working then? These figures keep on getting more
and more insane, no wonder only a few factories on the planet can
do it.

 

[Dimiter_Popoff]

On 12/7/2021 3:25, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

On Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 12:14:43 PM UTC+11, Martin Brown wrote:
On 06/12/2021 19:04, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 12/6/2021 20:47, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 20:36:17 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <d...@tgi-sci.com> wrote:
On 12/6/2021 19:42, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

snip

It may yet swing the other way when simulations are so good that the conversion to masks is essentially error free.

That happened around 1990. The electron beam tester I was working on back then was the next generation of a unit which famously trimmed three months off the development time of the Motorola 68k processor chip set.

The project wasn\'t canned because out machine didn\'t work - we did get it working quite well enough to demonstrate that it was an order of magnitude faster than it\'s predecessor - but because simulation had got good enough that most mask sets produced chips that worked.

The older, slower, machines were quite fast enough to check out that the simulation software was predicting what actually happened on the chip and that killed our market.

It is a shame such an advanced machinery has been lost (or did it
survive for some niche applications?)

 

[Dimiter_Popoff]

On 12/7/2021 3:40, Sylvia Else wrote:

On 07-Dec-21 12:14 pm, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at 4:44:06 AM UTC+11,
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/the-rising-tide-of-semiconductor

I\'ve also heard that the cost of one next-gen euv scanner is well over
$200M, and that the design and mask set for a high-end chip costs a
billion dollars.

We just don\'t need few-nm chips.

Semiconductor manufacturing is all about producing chips that have
mass market applications and can sell in huge numbers into the
relevant mass market

If you have a big enough market to pay for the next generation
euv-scanner and the billion dollar mask set required for the chip that
will dominate that market, it is a great investment.

The rest of us exploit those chips to serve different - smaller, but
more numerous - markets. We don\'t need few-nm chips to do that, but if
we can buy one more or less suitable for our application, we will do
it, because it\'s going to be faster and use less current than it\'s
predecessor. The interface to produce the outputs we can sell is
always a mess, but it\'s been like that forever.


A few nm is not many silicon atoms, so I have to wonder about the
longevity of these chips.

People generally may recycle their phones every couple of years (though
I don\'t), and manufacturers may be willing just to replace those that
die during the warranty period, but for most things one wants the
electronics to work for a reasonable time.

Sylvia.

I think I saw something somewhere about longevity, figures were not
great (if my memory is real, far from being sure).
My older phone lasted for 5 years and its micro-USB got broken so
I replaced the phone.
The current one is 4 years old and still works, though
about a year (or was it 18 months) ago its battery got swollen
(bad micro USB again, probably it damaged the battery by perpetual
power cycling) but I managed to buy locally both the connector and
a new battery at some negligible cost and replaced these so it still
works.