>I'm a chip architect
Many people with an ECE/CS background have probably had a FPGA + VHDL/Verilog course.
What are some additional skills needed to enter the chip industry?
Many people with an ECE/CS background have probably had a FPGA + VHDL/Verilog course.
What are some additional skills needed to enter the chip industry?
Not true, it is closer to 2 to 3x, and it is (slowly) getting cheaper. While it will take a long time (~3 years) for 14/16nm FinFET processes to reach price parity with what 28nm is now, it is dropping in price faster than when the 28nm generation came out due to the massive volumes of Apple, NVIDIA, etc.
It is looking like the 28nm generation will be a mainstay node, with continued investments by the major pure play fabs to keep bringing costs lower.
Is that because it's essentially the last planar node? IIRC 20nm kinda sucked for both planar and FinFET so 28 is the last planar and 14/16 is looking like a long term node as well. Is that why you think 28 will be a mainstay?
I'm seeing 28,14 and 7 as pretty much stable and widespread over the next 10 years, with 14 and 7 being significant for cost/perf and cost/density reasons.
After a decade or so I actually made a concious decision to stop building chips, once the novelty wore off I found I was doing a month's creative work a year and 11 months of timing and DV. As a systems software hack I'd get somthing woprking today, and something else tomorrow - much more of a sense of accomplishment - these days I do a bit of hardware and a bit of software - mostly embedded systems - I definitely enjoy it more