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Real chips would certainly provide more room, possibilities and performance - but would also take away from the fast turnaround time that FPGAs provide. And given this run only seems to give people a single shot to get the design right - you want to verify it on a FPGA upfront anyway.
[1] https://www.digikey.co.uk/en/blog/whatever-happened-to-progr...
I've been thinking that with supply chains breaking down, there's possibly a market opportunity for semiconductors to move back to older, cheaper process nodes that are easier to build a fab for, ensure there's a robust supply, and recover some of the recent performance improvements through less-bloated software. Chips were "good enough" back around 2001, when the 130nm process was introduced. In a world where you can't count on robust transportation & commerce and global (or even national) markets may fragment, it may make sense to be able to assure chip supply locally, even at the expense of absolute performance (which is less important when you can't be sure there's a single winner-take-all market). Would this program be a step toward that world?
In 1990, Cypress Semiconductor acquired a Control Data fab, which became Cypress Fab 4. At some point they developed a 130nm process. In 2017, cypress sold the fab to skywater, which was formed specifically to operate this fab. Skywater, google, and efabless collaborated to publish the PDK for the 130nm process.
“Old” processes like this have lots of uses, even before the recent supply chain issues (which were/are often worse for mature processes than more leading edge stuff). They are commonly used in automotive / embedded stuff, and the US government / military require US-based semiconductor fabrication for some contracts.
fry the slices in oil
salt the fried slices
April 11, 2022: Project submission is OPEN
June 8, 2022: Project submission is CLOSED"Inclusive". Ah.
When I'm writing technical documentation, it has one goal: to describe the project to anyone who wants to use it. "Inclusivity" is not a part of my goalset.
Is that really so bad?
Google has a HUGE amount of power over people's lives now, arguably more than the government. It has effectively become a form of government itself, but one we didn't vote for. Do you not see a problem with that?
No. Football is a-political. Thanksgiving dinner is a-political. My javascript library is a-political. My silicon design is a-political.
What's happened is an extremely small subset of people have decided to push politics where it doesn't belong. Everything must become a political weapon, because everything must serve the goal of some arbitrary progress. Merely existing without putting on badges in support of The Latest Thing(TM) is offensive -- because you have implicitly not taken a side, which explicitly means you are supporting the enemy. And if that goal requires sacrifice of thanksgiving dinner and family, than so be it.
It's done wonders to improve society's polarization problem, I tell you.
No, everything is political. If you're offended, you're welcome to not participate. Polarization sucks, yes, but pretending it doesn't exist typically means you see one side as right and the other as wrong. Not helpful.
I mean, everything is political just because humans do it is a funny perspective but so general that it really loses all meaning.
And yes, some can be baffling. I’m having trouble figuring out what first-class citizen is a reference to, if anything. Wikipedia’s article on first class citizens attributes the name to a paper by Christopher Strachey, which contains a single instance of the word “citizen” or a variant thereof:
> Thus in a sense procedures in ALGOL are second class citizens
Which is clear in context and vague out of context. I assume, with no real evidence, that this is a mildly confused reference to Ancient Greece, but I could be entirely off base. In any event, the term “first class”, to me, evokes “first class mail”, which is fascinating given the complete lack of, say, second-class mail. In the UK, “first-class” has additional meanings. I’m not sure why Google thinks that “first-class” is “socially charged”. Maybe someone from Google knows?
(I understand why “blacklist” would be seen as “socially charged”, although I wouldn’t use that term. I don’t think it was originally intended as a racist term, but there was a great essay, I think by Langston Hughes, on how this type of use of “black” can be problematic. Sadly, I can’t find that essay. I could be mis-remembering who wrote it.)
And good grief. The potential to spin an open source ASIC for free, simply to get experience is an AMAZING opportunity.
But I'll leave engineering before I submit to the arbitrary and ever changing demands of some potentate of newspeak. Doubleplusungood.
That "anyone" isn't a fixed set. The guidelines Google is listing are pretty minor steps someone can take to try to maximize the size of that set.
Going through my documentation and worrying about the possible misinterpretations of every single word is not a minor step.
That's OK, I'm sure they'll do it for you, when they decide where to rank it in their index of search results.
Of course Google is free to put any requirements they want on a project they fund (as long as it's within the bounds of the law) but "inclusive language" is the last thing I'd expect an evil corporation profiteering off everyone's data to put on there so front and center. I don't see anything in there about privacy, safety, or ethics, so you can presumably get free control chips for killer drones as long as you make it open source and use the right pronouns in your documentation?
Google's guidelines are here: https://developers.google.com/style/inclusive-documentation
I have to say though some of their examples are weird. I have never encountered anyone that would object to the phrase "senior citizens" or the word "hang" in documentation. The idea that the latter could cause "unintentional harm that might be caused by the violent interpretations" is frankly absurd.
You should be scared and deeply angered that Google is attempting to force changes to language which are mainly based on some radical political ideology.
Google's suggestion to change "landlord" for example, which has very specific cultural baggage and, more importantly, legal definitions, to something else is definitely wrong and worrying. I think it takes a certain arrogance that maybe only a Silicon Valley tech company can have to try to change how billions of people speak.
I'm not sure how much of an ideology it is though. Like the writers guide above, once the reasonable suggestions have been made, the authors seem to overreach to find more things to "fix". If a persons job depends on finding "problems" they will simply create new ones once the run out of legitimate ones. I think that's true whether it's planning officers for property development or politicians.
[1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/apr/25/google-word...
1) A team is tasked with providing suggestions to improve emails
2) "Inclusive language" or avoiding potentially insulting language is added as a feature by higher ups
3) The more entries in the "Inclusive language" feature the better the outcome looks to management or it helps meet some arbitrary employee metric (velocity or x issues resolved or similar)
4) More and more entries get added because it is easy to do
I already avoid insulting or alienating my audience. I don't need to write "inclusively" to do that. Good documentation is already bland and unoffensive.
> I have to say though some of their examples are weird.
And that's exactly what I object to. Something absurd like, "Use the term 'main' instead of 'master' for your repository's primary branch." Why? Because... ...slavery? This is lunacy.
Five months later, this arbitrary standard will change again. Talking about "primary branches" is now offensive, because it implies that one branch is more central than the others, and this is offensive to plural beings who identify as a Crape Myrtle tree. [1]
It's literally a bunch of people imagining ways that things can be misconstrued as offensive, and twisting language to the point of absurdity. I have better things to do with my time than to run on euphemism treadmills.
Are you talking about "master"? There are plenty of people outside the very far right who agree that slavery is bad but think that particular rule desperately needs some context-sensitivity.
The only people I remember with whom things like that had to be brought up were either apparently trying to use the brand for political leverage (which really isn't an option, can't do that) or had difficulty "getting" subtext and nuances in general paired with strong opinions on how they thought people parse language.
That's what I mean by "done well", only mandate what really would cause damage otherwise and be conservative about that, most people will try to minimize damage anyway and will be fine, but some people won't or can't and having that written down and declared mandatory helps clear up such situations.
My guess is that "senior citizen" is considered American English, so it's a poor choice for global audience. They even write "avoid figures of speech" to clarify that section.
That being said, I think I found the relevant document:
https://developers.google.com/style/inclusive-documentation
And it seems pretty reasonable to me.
I agree with the intentions here, but this goes a bit too far for me.
I can’t even try to imagine what someone would do if you suggested they “bit banged” an interface.
I'm deeply skeptical about lots diversity initiatives. But it's hard to find a place where I can subject my views to good scrutiny without also risking unemployment.
The evershifting and arbitrary nature of these standards is a guarantee that you will eventually fall afoul of it, face a kangaroo court trial in the DEI star chamber, and be burnt at the stake for your "crimes".
You can try and avoid it. It will come to you. The best place and time to fight it is right now. But you don't need to oppose it, you just need to not submit to it. [1]
My DMs are open on Twitter if you'd like to talk!
there's a theory (from slate star codex originally, i think), that these things are evershifting on purpose, as they serve as a class/education marker. you've got to be smart enough and sufficiently in-touch with the right kinds of people to figure out how the standards are/will change.
As a parent my role has shifted to be more involved with my kindergarten aged kid. The parents like to organize events and socialize. However, the language used is often "mom" instead of "parent". My understanding is that they aren't intending to exclude "dad", as they are using "mom" as shorthand for "most active parent". My involvement in the group has been lower as a result, it's tough to feel like you may not be included.
Certain language, to varying degrees, can offend or exclude your reader. You don't need to care, but it does impact the reader and could detract from the effectiveness of your docs.
But here lies the problem with "inclusive language": many schools argue that the terms mother, father, and parent are not inclusive.
Instead, terms like "caregiver" or "responsible adult" should be used, to include children who are raised by grandparents or adoped. The desire was to make sure father's were recognized. In a backwards way, suddenly no one was recognized.
If it's bad for society to not recognize the value of fatherhood, is this not a complete rejection of parenthood, and exclusion of children who have a nuclear family? But when you dig into the inclusivity crowd, you keep finding ridiculous things, like the idea that the nuclear family is white supremacy, and needs to be dismantled by erasing the language that supports systemic racism. Children with two biological parents are privileged, so they can yield their privilege and not have their family acknowledged with the terminology used.
Just keep pulling on the thread, and now we're referring to "birthing people" instead of women.
When I was in school (90s, 00s) it was "parent or guardian", which I think is a reasonable balance. I'm pretty sure that's still the phrasing my kid's school uses.
In any case, I dont think the Google guide goes to the extreme you mention.
Those on less efficient gear eventually get pushed out of the market because they can’t make a profit.
A 5nm node is many many times more power efficient than 130nm. There’s no contest. An ASIC with that kind of power draw would not be a profitable mining processor.
But not actually sure what % is usable and what distance between features is. So guess is actual number is a lot less than that.
Cunningham's Law works.
(I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't have, but sometimes I. Can't. Help. Myself.)