

The coolest and scariest things coming in the chip industry’s future - alex_c
http://venturebeat.com/2009/08/26/the-coolest-and-scariest-things-coming-in-the-chip-industrys-future/

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UncleOxidant
Not the best written article out there, but there are some valid points. The
part about design tools not being up to snuff is quite true. As is the reason:
not enough money is being invested in the EDA (Electronic Design Automation)
field right now. Most of the VC has been going to the web space for years now
and that's sucked a lot of the capital away from very important things like
chip development and chip design software.

I would also suggest that the brain drain isn't actually H1B's moving back to
their home countries: a huge amount of talent has been sucked into the web
space. EDA software is one of the most challenging areas of software
development - all kinds of interesting problems to solve in chip layout, power
minimization, high level synthesis, etc. Yet hardly anyone graduating with a
CS degree knows that it even exists - they graduate expecting to work for a
social networking, web company. To be fair, it's not like EDA is a big enough
field to absorb that many CS grads in any given year - in fact EDA is rather
stagnant right now... but I think that goes back to the lack of capital going
into EDA at this point. Given how important the semiconductor industry is to
the US it does seem like a major misallocation of resources.

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nvoorhies
This really is an amazing combination of repeating facts from people who know
what they're talking about, and clueless extrapolation from a reporter that
doesn't really understand all of what he just heard.

~~~
blueben
You aren't kidding.

"[The Power 7] could probably download the entire iTunes library to your
computer in about a minute or two"

~~~
alex_c
Yeah, I cringed at that, and made me wonder how valid the rest of the article
is.

Still, overall it seemed like an interesting bird's eye view of what people
are talking about, as someone who doesn't follow the hardware industry
closely.

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pyre
> _Intel recently had a chip design team in India create its Dunnington server
> chip, which was announced last year. That’s one of the most difficult kinds
> of chips to design._

Huh? What kind of chip is the most difficult to design?

That's like saying Windows XP is one of the most difficult types of Windows to
design. That makes no sense.

{edit} There's also this gem: "It will be have 16 processing cores that can do
for tasks, or threads, at a time." {/edit}

~~~
wmf
A server chip is one of the most difficult kinds of chips to design.

~~~
pyre
How is a 'server chip' that much different than a 'desktop chip?' Other than
possible increases in caches and/or the number of cores?

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zhyder
The big problem is that the the chip industry's market is shrinking in the
long-term. As hardware has gotten faster ('fast enough'), the _need_ for
custom hardware solutions has reduced, since you can more easily and cheaply
do things in software. Similarly the need for faster general-purpose hardware
has also reduced, at least in the consumer space, hence the constantly
dropping ASPs of desktops and laptops. Emerging markets like China help, but
only while penetration there is still low.

And since we all pick the fastest path to riches, investors as well as
engineers flock to Google/Facebook/etc. Combined with us reaching natural
limits of Moore's law (using Si at least), we aren't likely to see nearly the
same leaps in the next two decades as we've seen in the past two.

Disclaimer: I was in the chip industry and recently moved into webapps with my
startup

~~~
wmf
Has the total chip market started shrinking yet? I thought growth from phones
and other consumer electronics would easily make up for any dip in PC/server
chips.

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preview
Item 6 (goodbye custom chips) is not a new trend. It's been happening over the
last several years. Programmable logic has progressed and encroached on all
but the high volume ASICs. If the volume is there, an ASIC makes sense.
Otherwise, there's a wonderful world of FPGAs just waiting for you to explore.

Item 8 (no more chip startups) may be technically true, but I think it's just
an evolution of the business model. Rather than planning for an ASIC
immediately, you would begin by implementing the IP in an FPGA. This allows
you to prove the design and the market. If the market is sufficiently large,
you may choose to create an ASIC.

Item 10 (brain drain continues) seems obvious. Of course the capability of
engineers in India and China would improve and catch up to the U.S. With the
improved skill there's also an increase in cost as those with the skills
commands better pay. Equilibrium will follow.

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tjic
item 6: no more custom chips.

item 7: everyone can create custom chips in their garage.

Color me befuddled...

~~~
UncleOxidant
Being able to create custom chips in your garage is still many years away from
being possible... note that the MIT team working on this is aiming for a $50K
price for a garage fab, not a lot of people will be able to afford that
(startups, yes).

I think what the author is trying to say is that in the meantime the whole
custom chip thing is in trouble.

~~~
hughprime
It's cheap enough that anyone with a conceivable need for a chip fab can
easily afford one.

Regardless of what the article says (it'll be just like youtube!), I can't
imagine why random individuals would want to create their own chips, even if
they could.

