Alex Mann

Had a great chat today with @notthreadguy - lots of good ideas Thank you for the thoughts 🤝

I was challenged to make a chip from scratch in <2 weeks with no prior experience Here’s how I’m planning to speed run the entire learning process for chip design & fabrication (suggestions welcome) 1. Prerequisites > Review circuits physics - (semiconductors, p-n, junctions, diodes, capacitors) > Review computer systems - (transistors, gates, combinatorial logic, sequential logic, memory, ALU, CPU & Von Neumann architecture, machine language, assembly, C) 2. Chip Fabrication - How are chips actually manufactured? > Read Microchip Fabrication (Peter Van Zant) > Test: Rewatch @szeloof's chip fabrication videos, everything should make sense and should be able to explain it back > Understand the progression of ASML machines > Understand how EUV works in-depth 3. Architectures - What are the main chip designs used in chips today? > Learn about x86 vs. ARM vs. RISC-V > Learn RISC-V in-depth (chip tape-out will be using RISC-V CPU) 4. Electronic Design Automation - How do you design and verify your own chips to be sent for fabrication? > Do @matthewvenn's zerotoasiccourse[.]com (learn chip design, verification, etc.) > Design & test my own RISC-V ASIC with Verilog/OpenLANE/Caravel - right now I'm thinking of making either a minimal GPU or transformer accelerator, but open to any ideas > Submit chip design for tape-out to TinyTapeout 5. ASICs - What application specific chips are used for in different industries? How do they work? > AI Accelerators - Untether, Tenstorrent, Etched, Groq > Telecomm - Network switches, routers, NICs, etc. > Cars - engine control units (ECU), advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), etc. > Finance - FPGAs for high-frequency trading 6. Technology Progressions - How has the technology in the chip industry progressed over the past few decades? > Progression of advancements that led to Moore's Law > Progression of advancements in NVIDIA GPUs > Progression of advancements in TSMC fabrication process 7. Industry & Business - What are the dominant forces shaping the chip industry today? > Read Chip War > Understand the CHIPS act and geo-politics > Understand the business of each part of the chip industry value chain (IP cores, EDA, wafer fab equipment, fabless chip cos, integrated device manufacturers, chip foundries, OSAT) 8. Opportunities - What are the big opportunities in this space? > What are the big opportunities for large companies? > What are the big areas of opportunity suitable for young founders? > Where are the big VC bets going to be? > What companies are still good investments? Is it actually possible to do this in 2 weeks? It's a very aggressive schedule but I actually think it's doable (I've started already and on-track so far). Partly posting so I can't not ship. I'll be sharing what I learn/ship throughout the whole thing (and probably linking under this thread). Also going to post a more complete version of this thread with what I know in hindsight after - I anticipate that this schedule will change a lot. What should I change about this? What should I add? Any suggestions for what to update about this schedule/extra stuff I should be learning about/places I should be going/etc.

@PatrickMoorhead @nvidia Accelerator standards are critical to the next phase of industry growth IMO