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Were your tapeouts shuttles or full production tapeouts?

Until 2011, all of our tapeouts were shuttles. (for our initial market the per die cost was fine). You get 50 dies/wafer on a shuttle run and can order a lot of wafers...with a theoretical per wafer price of $5000 that would mean $100 die, which is not bad for some systems.

Full mask tapeout was done later.

What shuttle service did you use for 16 and 64 core development? Might help someone stay close to your cost profile. Btw, your data sheet for 64 core says 65nm, too. I thought it was 28nm or maybe I misread one of your posts. 16 to 64 core on same node would be nice. :)

And good luck with "The Brain." Saw that on your website just now. Funny that I was thinking of proposing to someone a prior product for revival that did NN's with 256 8-bit cores on 0.5 micron with good results. Then, ABC Thinking Machines Super-Connector had badass GA results back in the day with 64,000 simple cores. Your design looks like a Thinking-Machine-on-a-chip level of cores with cores being more versatile. Not 64-65k but close enough. :)

You might find this interesting:

https://www.synopsys.com/dw/ipdir.php?ds=ev52-ev54

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