
Common definitions in chip design and production - partycoder
https://www.parallella.org/2016/02/18/200-chip-definitions-everyone-should-know/
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netgusto
"Given how important chips are to modern society EVERYONE should understand
and appreciate how they are made"

Everyone ? Maybe everyone in the field of chip making ? How does the knowledge
of these definitions impacts the life of those not in this field (not being
sarcastic, this is an actual question) ?

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wmonk
How can you fix your home electronics if you do not know all 200 chip
designs??

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Ralfp
I'm using violence. Works when video starts flickering on our Samsung's TV.

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a_imho
ICs are one of the most important and impressive achievements of humankind
imo. Taking a handful of Si atoms to form a transistor then carefully
arranging a billion of them to make an x64 processor, just so Randall can
watch a cat jumping into a box and make a webcomic of it.

Making useful things at those scales amazes me everytime.

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turnip1979
I'm impressed too but also dismayed by how little the average person (or even
the average CS person) understands about the low level stuff. I had a top
notch CS undergrad degree, but I'm only truly able to grok some of the finer
points 15 years out. And that's because I'm learning to use FPGAs as a hobby.

The Internet is truly marvelous in this regard. I'm using free tutorials,
documentaries and videos to satisfy my curiosity and pretty much getting an EE
education. Ignoring the car pictures, the Internet gives me much hope.

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bogomipz
But why should the average person know how about "low level stuff"? A CS major
should know the the level of gates and boolean logic but deeper than that why?
Intel's cofounders weren't CS majors, one was physics and the other chemistry.

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pippy
I agree. Unless the CS major is planning on specializing in embedded software,
things like complexity classes and database normalization would be of more
use. Even that is overkill, as in my experience leveraging and utilizing
software libraries in the correct way often has already solved the issue at
hand. Nowadays even more high level skills as that such as networking,
caching, and distrusted computing are of more use when it comes to
optimization.

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AstroJetson
If it was going to be real satire, they would have stuck at least one
reference to a unique chip, say the Lays Wavy with Old Bay Spice. I'm going
with it was a chip glossary that the author thought important.

Not the best title. I was also thinking it was the top 200 chips like the
basic 7400 family, 6502, 8051, 555, etc.

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Normal_gaussian
I'm not surprised they think everybody should understand how chips are made.

Using their documentation last year was a nightmare with errata in archived
forum posts. I also found the community response quite hostile to simple
outsider questions.

Then again, when we finally completed our testing of their chips we found the
memory transfer overhead killed any benefit for us.

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_pmf_
Out of interest: what was your intended purpose and what alternative did you
decide on?

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Normal_gaussian
Some real time image convolutions with histeresis. We ended up switching to a
Xeon Phi and abandoning the portable version.

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smoyer
It's a bit sloppy - the most egregious are:

Audio codec - compression is now common but only coding/decoding is required
(hence the name).

GPIO - General Purpose Input Output.

Schmidt trigger - I have no idea what they wer trying to type but my cats do
the same thing. A device with a Schmidt trigger input provides hysterysis for
noise rejection?

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neoeldex
I don't understand your sentiment, how are those egregious?

The referenced wiki article on audio codecs also talks about compression, in
audio the two on very similar. GPIO is GPIO, but an engineer should know what
they are and do. Schmitt triggers are really spelled like that, not with ..dt.
Schmitt triggers are used for generating a stable block signal out of an
analog signal, in order to decrease ripples and glitches

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quesera
The copy is egregiously sloppy in places. The title is surely the most
problematic, but the entry for Schmitt Trigger might be the worst:

    
    
        Schmitt Trigger: Comparitor circuit wityh
    

The list is decent, and intentionally superficial -- it's a list, not a
textbook. The guy seems to know his material, but English might not be his
first language, and I don't think proofreading happened.

I would guess that the list grew out of years of conversations and exposed
gaps of shared knowledge. It's a good list of things that establish a common
vocabulary in a specific industry.

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pif
Replace "everyone should know" with "someone may be curious to know", and the
title will start to make sense.

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kabes
And yet, somehow my grandmother managed to pull through without knowing about
Amdahl’s law and wafer thinning

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FuNe
Original title is: "200 chip definitions everyone should know" OP had the good
sense to change and strip it off the of self-importance and self-righteousness
(although the writer probably meant to say 'everyone in IT business). Don't
get me wrong. I'm not trying to be stupidly pedantic but no I do not think
that social worker next door needs to know what ADC means.

IT-wise, yes younger generations seem to be in total loss with ICs and I
believe the simple reason is that there are no jobs there anymore so there
isn't a motivation to learn more about it. Virtual everything (as started off
with JVM) has contributed too there. Not sure though that they are missing out
that much.

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Artlav
Hm. What is the point? If you are in the field, you'll know most of these
terms naturally. If you aren't, then you'll just forget them after passing the
exam, or whatever.

Sounds like extra-thick satire to me.

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rjsw
If you want to get into the field then the Parallella board is good value, the
Verilog and build scripts for the default configuration are on Github.

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nobodyshere
I kind of don't like them since they failed to deliver on their 64 core board.

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kriro
Quite the contrast to the little piece of paper I have sitting on my shelve
that reads

one and one zero

everything else is one

make a computer

;)

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bbcbasic
Nand?

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kriro
Yes, the only haiku I ever wrote :P

I suppose "The Elements of Computing Systems" is an inspiring book.

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Kinnard
Anyone ever consider creating an IC bootcamp?

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jacquesm
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdcKwOo7dmM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdcKwOo7dmM)

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Kinnard
Niiiiiice!

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unwind
Cool list(s), but I think the title is misleading. It should be something like
"200-word chip design glossary", or "Chip design terminology: list of 200
definitions".

Now it sounds as if there are 200 actual _chip definitions_ , whatever that
would mean, since it doesn't say its (just) about words and jargon used in the
field of chip design.

I confuse easily.

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Chris2048
You're right - I though there where going to be circuit diagrams, or possibly
pin-outs...

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ricksplat
Common chip-design paradigms? Architecture patterns? I was expecting things
like "TTL", "Discrete Logic", "Von Neumann", "Microcontroller" etc. etc.
Interesting nonetheless.

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peter303
Lista are not that pedagogical. "Heres a French-English dictionary. start
speaking French."

