Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!xanth!lll-winken!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (Wm. E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: So, can you really fab 10**6 transistors now?
Keywords: densities geometries silicon-compilers
Message-ID: <13386@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 21 Mar 89 14:55:30 GMT
References: <7392@polya.Stanford.EDU> <1161@motmpl.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Distribution: na
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 20

In article <1161@motmpl.UUCP> ron@motmpl.UUCP (Ron Widell) writes:

| The 88k problems were not due to chip density, but to the fact that we were
| trying to debug two (inter-related) things at once. Remember, the 88k was
| not a hand-packed design, but the output of a silicon compiler; so we
| had to debug both the definitions going into the compiler as well as the
| compiler itself. (Can you say "Chase your tail"? :^)).

  A silicon compiler in theory will let you change processes by simply
putting in the design rules for the new process and recompiling the
chip. I've seen some claims of this, but the processes were all low
tech. Could you comment on the ability of your compiler to do that, if
someone needed the 88k in something new, like 7000 angstrom radiation
hard boron phosphate (just an example)? I realize that this may be
(probably is) proprietary. but I thought I'd ask.

-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@crd.GE.COM)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me