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random__duck

196 karma · joined March 23, 2026

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random__duck··on How OpenAI Used Its Own LLMs to Design Its Jalapeño Chip
Finally, thanks for stating the obvious! I was starting to wonder if I was not going insane.

A team of senior elite chip designers builds something they already know how to build and everyone goes "wow AI be so powerful".

random__duck··on Open source FPGA: the next frontier is silicon
Open source FPGA silicon in the wild, and it works.
random__duck··on RISC-V: They Should Have Known Better
> slighly crazy

What a lovely euphemism.

Signed: someone slightly crazy.

random__duck··on RISC-V: They Should Have Known Better
"This time its different".
random__duck··on RISC-V: They Should Have Known Better
I wonder if they will be inviting him to the next RISC-V design committee meeting.
random__duck··on Apple is getting this wrong
Spot on, while reading this post I couldn't help be wonder "but what about the prototypes"?
random__duck··on Designing an Ethernet Switch ASIC
No AI was used either for the project itself or for the post. I encourage you to look at the code and the git history.
random__duck··on Designing an Ethernet Switch ASIC
As the designer of "an ethernet connected beacon that counts and never overflows until the heat death of the universe" (https://talesonthewire.com/projects/until_heat_death_do_us_p...) I believe you have found the perfect audience for a memeish hardware project. So don't expect anything but my upmost support. :)

I detailed the roadmap for custom ASIC design a bit here: https://talesonthewire.com/projects/two_weeks_until_tapeout/... and joining the Tiny Tapeout discord community is a great place to reach out for help.

random__duck··on Designing an Ethernet Switch ASIC
No AI was used either for the project itself or for the post.
random__duck··on Designing an Ethernet Switch ASIC
Nice, thanks for posting the link. For the people unfamiliar with the Tiny Tapeout program: everyone that gets a copy of the Tiny Tapeout chip will be getting a copy of all the ASICs on the shuttle.
random__duck··on Designing an Ethernet Switch ASIC
True, I went over the EDA stack a bit in a previous article here: https://talesonthewire.com/projects/blake2s_hashing_accelera...

This used the librelane classic flow, so it's a lot of verilator, yosys, openroad, opensta, magic and klayout. :)

random__duck··on Designing an Ethernet Switch ASIC
You can join multiple Tiny Tapeout tiles (grid squares) together to form bigger projects, which is what I did here. It's actually one of the bigger 4 grid projects.

Also how much you can fit really depends on the node the shuttle is targeting. So I was in luck that this was on Global Foundries 180nm as you can cram in a lot for flip-flops onto a single tile compared with Skywater 130nm. On the other hand the gates are much slower than on Skywater 130nm.

Hopefully both programs will be around for a while, so if you are still interested when you have more time you can join the shuttle then.

random__duck··on Designing an Ethernet Switch ASIC
Sounds like they could have used you on that team. Bad luck, but it at least you can walk away proud knowing it was not an issue with your technical skills. :)
random__duck··on AI Overviews could push Reddit to end its $60M-a-year deal with Google
Well that isn't good new for google's advertising review if this is a trend.
random__duck··on Frontpages of the EU
This is great!
random__duck··on The Whispering Earring (2012)
I love this essay so much, it is such on point.
random__duck··on GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
Now this is a future 100 billion dollar industry!
random__duck··on OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router
Can I do a "hold my beer" moment ? https://github.com/Essenceia/ethernet_switch_asic
random__duck··on OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router
Thanks :) Yeah, the router is defiantly further in the future to, as it additionally requires CPU integration for run the software stack, switches are the first order of business.
random__duck··on 1k Words: A Writing Contest
Alright I am back from the trenches after having written 1k words and as expected: I did not impress myself.
random__duck··on Counting Until the End of the Universe
Haha, nice one. Defiantly all wrong, if hardware design was a religion I might have been excommunicated for this. Deploying the fix now, it should have been "all nighter".
random__duck··on Look mom, no ADCs Scaling ML analog compute to 1000x lower energy than digital
The animated graphics at the end are really cool, how did you make them ?
random__duck··on 1k Words: A Writing Contest
Here is my contribution, titled "The human zoo": https://gist.github.com/Essenceia/c54a8d8fe0d693f96fb7c036f2...
random__duck··on 1k Words: A Writing Contest
I read your nonfiction entry, my thoughts where somewhere along the line of "well this escalated quickly".
random__duck··on 1k Words: A Writing Contest
That is a very good point, such a rule would place a huge burden on the organizers.
random__duck··on OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router
Next step: open source hardware ASIC for the open router ?
random__duck··on 1k Words: A Writing Contest
I am partially worried of discovering that writing a 1000 words is actually much harder for me now than it was when I was 13.
random__duck··on Counting Until the End of the Universe
Broadcasting over Ethernet until the heat death of the universe with a custom ASIC, or yet another terrible idea, this time inspired by reddit.
random__duck··on Show HN: Claude skills to make anti-AI slop UI
I really like the AI slop UI's though, it acts as a strong signal to the user that this was designed using AI. Fells like this is making us lose information.
random__duck··on Happy Voluntary Lobotomy Day, Microsoft
"The layoffs will continue until productivity improves" is truly a poignant quote.
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