Comment by mNovak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mNovak | Hacker News Reader

This looks really fun, and I'm hopeful for low cost prototyping to come to IC development. But I think 3D printing is the wrong comparison -- the much closer example is PCBs, and while we can DIY PCBs (I did this in college) it's not even necessary as they're just so cheap because of the rise of aggregators and high volume scaling in China.

I have to wonder if there's not more that can be done on this front for low cost IC prototyping. I don't think the fixed infrastructure is necessarily the problem (i.e. building the fab) as there's enough capacity for cheap chips in volume, meaning each additional wafer isn't the cost limiting factor. There are multi-project wafers (like PCB aggregators), but my understanding is that the hard cost limit currently is the NRE of making the mask set, which isn't getting amortized over a sufficient number of devices in a prototype run.

So cheap masks (or fewer masks) would be an area I'd be interested to see development.

It's also tooling. Professional grade PCB design software can be acquired for a few kilobucks per year and OSS versions (KiCAD) are pretty useable. Professional grade IC design software is hundreds of thousands per year and open source competitors are barely usable in comparison. I do share your hopes though, democratizing IC design even a little would be a huge boon to hardware development.

> OSS versions (KiCAD) are pretty useable

Until you actually need to route DDR, run any signal simulation model, etc.

You can route DDR in KiCad and there are some online reports of people doing that. KiCad is not as nice as the paid software and there are shortcomings but I think 'pretty useable' covers its status accurately.

You "can" make fire with a piece of string and some sticks in a pinch.

I wouldn't describe this as a "pretty usable" means, however, for the same reasons KiCad is unusable for DDR routing.

I think that's hyperbolic. There are several designs advertised as being designed in KiCAD that have DDR which means there are way more not being advertised.

https://www.kicad.org/made-with-kicad/categories/Single-boar...

As an impatient person who likes prototyping I still wish DIY PCBs were easier and less messy. The turnaround time of DIY can't be beat, but every process I have seen has something I don't like about it, except maybe fiber lasers (which I'm not too well acquainted with).

If you're referring to fiber laser pcb production, it's shiete because burnt fr4 becomes conductive, and plethora of other reasons, really.

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