Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!cornell!uw-beaver!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!reed!intelhf!ichips!ichips!colwell From: colwell@pdx023.pdx023 (Robert Colwell) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Mass produced custom chips Message-ID: Date: 23 Apr 91 16:05:26 GMT References: <12742@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <6286@optilink.UUCP> <2548@spim.mips.COM> Sender: news@omews63.intel.com (News Account) Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon Lines: 52 In-Reply-To: mash@mips.com's message of 23 Apr 91 05:50:11 GMT In article <2548@spim.mips.COM> mash@mips.com (John Mashey) writes: In article <6286@optilink.UUCP> manley@optilink.UUCP (Dave Manley) writes: >Now, maybe your question should be: Will the day ever come when we can cheaply, >fast build custom CPUs? If only it were so easy .... One also needs to: a) Cheaply and quickly generate the corresponding set of of diagnostics for both design verification and production. I especially want to see the ones for custom new designs with multi-processor, 2-level cache coherency... generated quickly... and worse: b) Cheaply and quickly generate the corresponding set of compilers, debuggers, libraries.... Now, there has been progress in both of those areas, so it's hardly hopeless..... but not easy :-) Said the spider to the fly...the micro guys have ruined the CPU design game for most folks, IMHO (yeah, I know, I'm one of them now.) There's so very much more to this than the cost of designing and fabbing your first working production parts. You need to design the system, too. You need software, including OS, compilers, assemblers, debuggers, linkers, & profiling tools. You need a sales force that understands your product and can sell to customers. You need a marketing organization that knows where the customers hide and how to reach them. You need a benchmarking crew, because nobody's technology is so much better than everyone else's that they can live with off-the-shelf performance across the board. You need field service. And you need a story as to why somebody should take a chance on your system or processor instead of going with a sure bet by somebody bigger. I believe that the only hope for future garage-shop hardware designers is to get faster & much cheaper fabs, but also to get faster & much cheaper logic synthesis and simulation tools. Ultimately, I believe it's hopeless to try to design "custom CPUs"; if you do manage to overcome the big guys' economies of scale and captive process technology, and you also manage to get to market quicker than they do, and you achieve all of the things mentioned above, you still need a significant performance edge (or some other value-added.) Good luck with that, too. Personally, I believe the day has already come and gone, just as it has in the auto industry. There's an auto museum near Cape Cod, Mass., with a display near the front door of the logos of all the car companies that existed from 1910 through the present day. It's quite sobering to see how many there once were compared to how many survive today. Imagine what it would take to start up a new one nowadays. Bob Colwell colwell@ichips.intel.com 503-696-4550 Intel Corp. JF1-19 5200 NE Elam Young Parkway Hillsboro, Oregon 97124