Is there anything we need more than an open source Chip?

1 points by dfps 4 years ago | 2 comments

Would the chip shortage have even happened if we had opensource chips (and lasers to make them)?

WorldPeas 4 years ago |

I think the problem is less the chip and more the fabs. You can print all the open source arm chips you want down at ye olde tsmc, but they(and asml) are the centralized masters of our fate. What we need is an open source fabbing machine, akin to a prusa so it can be iterated on until we have chip machines cheap enough for low-nm limited runs

eternityforest 4 years ago |

Chipmaking capacity is already maxed out and the whole world is scrambling to make more.

What we need is open source chip fabs. But even billion dollar companies consider this a major challenge. The community probably isn't going to be doing anything like that. Maybe with a lot of funding from some billionaire(Theoretically it could happen if someone was obsessed with the apocalypse and wanted there to be public plans to rebuild if it happened) we could do mid 90s grade stuff.

Seems unlikely anyone could do what TSMC does without a similar amount of time and money.