On a Mission to Disrupt the Siloed Silicon Industry | Hacker News Reader

On a Mission to Disrupt the Siloed Silicon Industry

7 pointsBracketMaster6 comments

I suppose this is a bit desperate - but it SO hard to find skilled AND passionate CPU/GPU RTL designers or individuals with a solid grasp on the Linux graphics stack.

I'm the founder of Chip11 - and we're on a mission to build an ecosystem of open source hardware components.

Our progress so far:

- we're funded

- functional/verified LPDDR4/5 PHY

- functional/verified SERDES PHY

- GPU RTL running some basic 3d application

- CPU RTL running some basic C code

We need to finish out the LPDDR4/5 controller as well as the CPU design and GPU design.

Finally - we need to write some drivers.

We plan to release our entire codebase under GPLV3 after we tapeout a fully functional SOC.

Been on HN for a while and am aware it has a stronger bias towards software - but hoping to bump into people with hardware strengths as well.

Well rounded individuals are the best. Cannot understate how nice it is to find somebody who can fluently write hardware and then switch to writing Rust at a flick of the wrist.

I think you'll have a better luck on electronics engineering forums:

- https://www.electro-tech-online.com

- https://www.allaboutcircuits.com

- https://www.edaboard.com

And link up with people on Twitter who are into this:

- https://twitter.com/eevblog

- https://twitter.com/Chris_Gammell

- https://twitter.com/mikelectricstuf

- https://twitter.com/BenKrasnow

It seems to me that using Power ISA is a definite non-starter. I mean why use something that will make the final product obsolete, after a single iteration? I really don't get it, even after factoring in realities. Seems investor driven.

And that table at the end of chipeleven.com reinforces this, after giving it a bit of consideration it looks like slanted marketing speak. Note how it puts POWER in the best possible light, barely succeeding, while also putting the Open Source competitor in the most negative light.

But hey, I'm helping you out here: a critical comment drawing out replies is a surefire way to the HN front page.

Its definitely not investor driven at all. We had a long long internal hashing out of RISC-V vs. POWER internally - and POWER won by a long shot when it came to sheer demand from potential customers interested in something other than embedded hard drive controller CPUs.

For example, POWER right now support off the shelf AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. POWER also has full JSv8 web browser and JDK engine support.

And I also don't build companies for investors. EVER.

I've chosen investors that believe in the vision and I am not afraid to be vocal.

I would love to know a litte about how you got to where you are, what you're doing is hard, requires a lot of capital and a lot of track-record and I'm looking to do the same in another area of silicon; would you be willing to chat to me about how you got this far, please?

Happy to have a chat. How may I reach you?

Sorry, I didn't realise you replied. You can get me on jan.sharp.1990 at gmail

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