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Everybody, get your money!!! — Parallax Forums

Everybody, get your money!!!

At 5nm, it will cost $500 million or more to design a “reasonably complex SoC,” Johnson said. In comparison, it will cost $271 million to design a 7nm SoC, which is about 9 times the cost for a 28nm planar device, according to Gartner.

I just wanted to be sure everyone starts saving now for Prop3.

http://semiengineering.com/going-to-gate-all-around-fets/

Comments

  • Gulp!

    If prices come down over time, whilst everyone is saving over time, then perhaps we'd meet in the middle.

    So 5nm at "just" $250 million may not seem so bad :-)
  • Nonsense! We just need to make sure P2 becomes so popular that you'll sell billions of P3 chips. That will bring the price down!
  • cgraceycgracey Posts: 14,133
    If you're making a 5nm chip, I think your plan has to be to take over the world, or you'll lose.

    It's amazing how rarefied small processes have become. Never have transistors been so cheap and so expensive at the same time. I bet there are only 5 customers for this 5nm process. There may be 3 for 3nm.
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 13,800
    The 7nm is a bargain at only 9x cost of 28nm.
    Potential yield increases a factor of 16...
  • Reading the article made me wonder why anyone is bothering with 5nm. But it wasn't long ago I was wondering the same thing about 28nm. In fact I'm still not at peace with electromigration. Seems like building a $500 million home on shifting sand.
  • Drop in the bucket for intel and the others actually using these small processes.
  • Personally, I'd be happy with:

    - the 90nm P2 in production
    - a year or two after that, 45nm P3

    Extrapolating from current P2 design, that should allow for 64 cogs with 2MB of Hub and 256 smart pins. DROOL!
  • Personally, I'd be happy with:

    - the 90nm P2 in production
    - a year or two after that, 45nm P3

    Extrapolating from current P2 design, that should allow for 64 cogs with 2MB of Hub and 256 smart pins. DROOL!
    Won't hub latency be a problem with 64 COGs? Might need some new interconnect once we get that many.

  • Personally, I'd be happy with:

    - the 90nm P2 in production
    - a year or two after that, 45nm P3

    Extrapolating from current P2 design, that should allow for 64 cogs with 2MB of Hub and 256 smart pins. DROOL!

    How about just a P2 with full 1MB Hub RAM and 1MB flash (plus the speed increase).
  • cgraceycgracey Posts: 14,133
    Say, by some miracle, Parallax was able to sock away $100k per month. It would take 417 years to save up $500,000,000.
  • So, we literally can put a person into space with less money than creating yet another "Linux on a chip"?

    Forget all that...I say bring back the Commodore 64 and let's live like it's 1983 again. Demand goes down which means cost goes down.

    :-D

    P.S., I'm serious about the Commodore 64 part.
  • Correct, I was willing to swallow the latency :)

    A better way would be to group them - say one hub ram per 8 cores - and have a "superhub" shared by all groups.
    David Betz wrote: »
    Personally, I'd be happy with:

    - the 90nm P2 in production
    - a year or two after that, 45nm P3

    Extrapolating from current P2 design, that should allow for 64 cogs with 2MB of Hub and 256 smart pins. DROOL!
    Won't hub latency be a problem with 64 COGs? Might need some new interconnect once we get that many.

  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,140
    cgracey wrote: »
    If you're making a 5nm chip, I think your plan has to be to take over the world, or you'll lose.

    It's amazing how rarefied small processes have become. Never have transistors been so cheap and so expensive at the same time. I bet there are only 5 customers for this 5nm process. There may be 3 for 3nm.

    Yes, eye-watering numbers, however there is also movement at the 'trailing edge'.

    This recent news, gave a test run of parts, for a much more modest $50k, in 65nm - effectively a mask FPGA.

    http://forums.parallax.com/discussion/164828/more-shuttle-choices

    "The Shuttle is for the FG65L-5 device, which is a 65nm technology up to 600,000 usable gates, up to 900kbit of memory, 4 PLLs/DCMs with maximum of 242 user IOs."

    The challenge then is, how much Prop can actually fit into that FG65L-5 ?

    A company is doing microcoded 8086 and 8051, in impressively small LE counts - low 300's ..

    http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/max-unleashed-and-unfettered/4442147/Micro-sequencer-based-8051-core-requires-only-312-FPGA-LUTs
    http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=216&doc_id=1328967
  • cruXiblecruXible Posts: 78
    edited 2016-09-30 01:01
    Shame; I came in here thinking there was free money.
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,066
    Not even a win on the Mega Lottery will pay for this :(
  • cgraceycgracey Posts: 14,133
    Cluso99 wrote: »
    Not even a win on the Mega Lottery will pay for this :(

    Even if you could sell 10 million units, the NRE cost, alone, would be $50 per unit. You'd better be selling it for $100. Those metrics could work in an iPhone, I suppose. It's just nuts how much money that is. It's surreal.
  • Intel CPUs are $200-$1000+
    And they sell many many millions of units worldwide.
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,066
    edited 2016-09-30 04:50
    Guess it all depends on the chip I suppose.

    Imagine a chip similar to a P1 in a tiny QFN20 package with inbuilt xtal osc.
    The die would be really tiny, so lots on the wafer!!!
    Maybe the chip cost would be <$0.10, sell for $1.

    Could you sell 500M chips ???

    But the real problem is getting the ~$250 funding ;)

    Best be sure you have a winning chip!!!
  • At those numbers you'd want to make sure you got it right first time.
  • cgracey wrote: »
    Even if you could sell 10 million units, the NRE cost, alone, would be $50 per unit. You'd better be selling it for $100. Those metrics could work in an iPhone, I suppose. It's just nuts how much money that is. It's surreal.

    I recently read that Apple is at 16nm for iPhone and moving to 10nm for iPad. They may move to 7nm in 2018 and 5nm is likely to be after 2020. Even selling 100+ million units per year does not make the cost and risk viable right now.
  • cgraceycgracey Posts: 14,133
    edited 2016-09-30 14:53
    User Name wrote: »
    Reading the article made me wonder why anyone is bothering with 5nm. But it wasn't long ago I was wondering the same thing about 28nm. In fact I'm still not at peace with electromigration. Seems like building a $500 million home on shifting sand.

    I suspect the electromigration issue is being veiled by continuous replacements, due to upgrading.
  • It's not the cost that is making 7nm and 5nm be 2018 and 2020, it's that those processes aren't actually done and available for anyone to use.
    10nm is being finalized right now for first deliveries in 2017. 7nm will have first trial runs in 2017. No has even finalized designs for 5nm yet.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Chip,
    I suspect the electromigration issue is being veiled by continuous replacements, due to upgrading.
    This really bugs me.

    I'm used to the idea that if I build a thing with chips those chips are going to still be working long after I am not.

    Now it seems acceptable that they can fizz out just after the warranty period.

    That might be fine for phones and such that only last a few months anyway because the screens get busted. Have you ever seen an iPhone without a cracked screen?

    But what about people building infrastructure that is supposed to work reliably for thirty years?

    Is it realistic to expect that the whole world upgrades its entire infrastructure every two years or so?
  • There's a certain irony that the most sophisticated technology gets used for the most ephemeral products. The money is there, the longevity is not needed, and the whizz-bang is de rigueur.

    Meanwhile, space probes and jet airplane flight controllers will not be using 7nm. Ever.
  • cgraceycgracey Posts: 14,133
    And it is possible to make something run almost forever at 7nm by keeping the voltage very low, so that currents are low and power densities drop way down.

    There are parts of the Prop2 that have power densities of 7kW/cm2, like in the resistor sections of the 75-ohm DACs, where 36mW is being dissipated across a small area. Even a little op-amp circuit consuming 250uA can have a very high power density. You just need to spread those sections out from each other. Meanwhile, they cause steep temperature gradients on the die, which concentric layout can compensate for.
  • cgraceycgracey Posts: 14,133
    edited 2016-10-02 19:52
    User Name wrote: »
    There's a certain irony that the most sophisticated technology gets used for the most ephemeral products. The money is there, the longevity is not needed, and the whizz-bang is de rigueur.

    Meanwhile, space probes and jet airplane flight controllers will not be using 7nm. Ever.

    It seems that 10-year-device-lifespan electro-migration guidelines are in use for advanced processes these days. The automated chip design tools push up against these guidelines. You could tell the tools to work more conservatively, but I get the feeling nobody does that, because they want the performance.

    I often have trouble with my internet connection, being a line-of-site microwave system, and on a few occasions their tech guy asked me if my router was over 3 years old, as it might need replacing. Kind of like how tires wear out, to him. They do deal with a lot of people and their routers.
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,066
    cgracey wrote: »
    And it is possible to make something run almost forever at 7nm by keeping the voltage very low, so that currents are low and power densities drop way down.

    There are parts of the Prop2 that have power densities of 7kW/cm2, like in the resistor sections of the 75-ohm DACs, where 36mW is being dissipated across a small area. Even a little op-amp circuit consuming 250uA can have a very high power density. You just need to spread those sections out from each other. Meanwhile, they cause steep temperature gradients on the die, which concentric layout can compensate for.
    My understanding from reading, is that the migration issue has nothing to do with heat/current, but rather that metal is not truly a solid substance, and at these geometries, the metal flows (rather than migrates). Over time that flow can either short or open, depending on the flow.

    These days, it isn't even good on motor vehicles. The days of the cars expiring due to rust or motor/gearbox exiration in a few years are long gone.
    I have a 28 year old Toyota Supra that I have had since new. Still runs fine.
    Also a Toyota Prado 4WD, 19 years old, 400,000km on the clock, and still runs fine.

    As for car batteries, you can buy with 2 year or 3 year warranty. The good old car battery technology is well understood. They just make one of the return bars the right thickness so that it lasts precisely 2 or 3 years + a tiny bit. Built in replacement requirement.

    Why did it take so long to change from making the old filament light bulbs? Because they wear out. Then the US changes the rules, and voila, they can make a better filament light bulb. In Oz, we banned the filament bulbs so we switched to fluorescent bulbs. Great for the environment, not! They have a small amount of mercury in them so they should not be dumped in the rubbish - but most people don't even know this.
  • AleAle Posts: 2,363
    Say, by some miracle, Parallax was able to sock away $100k per month. It would take 417 years to save up $500,000,000.

    I don't see the problem, with the housing prices of lately, you have to work like 500 years to pay the mortgage !
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