AMD Introduces The Radeon Pro WX Series

[bridgman]

EDIT: Just in case you didn't know, software isn't written with zero's and one's either.

I don't know about that... I still have painful memories of entering boot loaders using front panel 1/0 switches, enough to read a cassette and bring in the code needed to interact with a teletype.

Lots of ones and zeros there

[duby229]

Nope. You don't start from high level but from low.

You're so wrong. In fact IC design starts at the highest possible level and gets lower during the course of optimizing your design.

[duby229]

I don't know about that... I still have painful memories of entering boot loaders using front panel 1/0 switches, enough to read a cassette and bring in the code needed to interact with a teletype.

Lots of ones and zeros there

I haven't seen data cassettes since those digital camcorders used them. Dipswitch interfaces for loaders is a bit before my time, I don't have any experience with them.

[starshipeleven]

You're so wrong. In fact IC design starts at the highest possible level and gets lower during the course of optimizing your design.

Nope. You of course start with a project, but the design is low to high, not "drop stuff and let proprietary programs figure things out".

[duby229]

Nope. You of course start with a project, but the design is low to high, not "drop stuff and let proprietary programs figure things out".

Since you don't want to do your own google search.... again..... Here are some links from wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit_design

Modern ICs are enormously complicated. An average desktop computer chip, as of 2015, has over 1 billion transistors. The rules for what can and cannot be manufactured are also extremely complex. Common IC processes of 2015 have more than 500 rules. Furthermore, since the manufacturing process itself is not completely predictable, designers must account for its statistical nature. The complexity of modern IC design, as well as market pressure to produce designs rapidly, has led to the extensive use of automated design tools in the IC design process. In short, the design of an IC using EDA software is the design, test, and verification of the instructions that the IC is to carry out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_design_automation

Current digital flows are extremely modular (see Integrated circuit design, Design closure, and Design flow (EDA)). The front ends produce standardized design descriptions that compile into invocations of "cells,", without regard to the cell technology. Cells implement logic or other electronic functions using a particular integrated circuit technology. Fabricators generally provide libraries of components for their production processes, with simulation models that fit standard simulation tools.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_synthesis

Hardware design can be created at a variety of levels of abstraction. The commonly used levels of abstraction are gate level, register-transfer level (RTL), and algorithmic level.

While logic synthesis uses an RTL description of the design, high-level synthesis works at a higher level of abstraction, starting with an algorithmic description in a high-level language such as SystemC and Ansi C/C++. The designer typically develops the module functionality and the interconnect protocol. The high-level synthesis tools handle the micro-architecture and transform untimed or partially timed functional code into fully timed RTL implementations, automatically creating cycle-by-cycle detail for hardware implementation.^[4] The (RTL) implementations are then used directly in a conventional logic synthesis flow to create a gate-level implementation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_synthesis

n electronics, logic synthesis is a process by which an abstract form of desired circuit behavior, typically at register transfer level (RTL), is turned into a design implementation in terms of logic gates, typically by a computer program called a synthesis tool. Common examples of this process include synthesis of HDLs, including VHDL and Verilog. Some synthesis tools generate bitstreams for programmable logic devices such as PALs or FPGAs, while others target the creation of ASICs. Logic synthesis is one aspect of electronic design automation.

[duby229]

reply stuck in mod queue

[starshipeleven]

Since you don't want to do your own google search.... again..... Here are some links from wikipedia.

You just showed that there are advanced IDEs that aid in the design of IC, that is not what we were talking about.
You know right that there are pretty complex proprietary IDEs for software too and many devs use them (Pycharms is one that springs to mind, for me at least)? Using a proprietary IDE does not make the software less libre, because the code coming out from it is the same as the code that comes out of anything else and can be compiled on whatever compiler.

That stuff is used to put down the design, and the design is down to transistor level because the fab is a dumb printer. If that design is declared opensource or libre by its makers it becomes open or libre, it does not matter that to modify it you need expensive programs and a buttload of expertise.

My main point was, in case it wasn't obvious, that the foundries do exactly 0 modifications to the design, so all their patents and things aren't (again) an issue for the libreness of the design.

[duby229]

You just showed that there are advanced IDEs that aid in the design of IC, that is not what we were talking about.
You know right that there are pretty complex proprietary IDEs for software too and many devs use them (Pycharms is one that springs to mind, for me at least)? Using a proprietary IDE does not make the software less libre, because the code coming out from it is the same as the code that comes out of anything else and can be compiled on whatever compiler.

That stuff is used to put down the design, and the design is down to transistor level because the fab is a dumb printer. If that design is declared opensource or libre by its makers it becomes open or libre, it does not matter that to modify it you need expensive programs and a buttload of expertise.

My main point was, in case it wasn't obvious, that the foundries do exactly 0 modifications to the design, so all their patents and things aren't (again) an issue for the libreness of the design.

No two semiconductor foundries will produce identical dies. The fabrication process is a literal transformation of code into hardware and the process of which is determined by highly sophisticated software. A fab is not anything at all like a "dumb printer". Also printers aren't dumb, they use software to transform image files into ink on a paper and no two printers will print exactly the same because their software isn't exactly the same.

I don't understand how you can think the transformation from design to physical hardware is 0 modifications. Obviously it's very highly sophisticated modification.

[bridgman]

I haven't seen data cassettes since those digital camcorders used them. Dipswitch interfaces for loaders is a bit before my time, I don't have any experience with them.

These were actually audio cassettes with an interface that turned a serial stream of 1's and 0's into audio tones that could be recorded, played back and decoded. Most people I know have never seen an audio cassette (my niece asked what a CD was last year) so:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette

Started with an Altair, then quickly moved to SWTPC 6800s. On the SWTPC you could type the boot loader in with hex characters (that was an option for the Altair as well IIRC but we had moved to SWTP boxes by then anyways:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800

http://www.pc-history.org/swtpc.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWTPC

We were using the PCs mostly as consoles to set up and run some more specialized equipment - a TI 9900 doing geometry processing (it had 16-bit HW multiply and divide which was pretty awesome for a microprocessor back than) and a 6x4 array of 6502s doing pixel processing. I think it was the first real-time VR system in Canada at the time.

[duby229]

These were actually audio cassettes with an interface that turned a serial stream of 1's and 0's into audio tones that could be recorded, played back and decoded. Most people I know have never seen an audio cassette (my niece asked what a CD was last year) so:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette

Started with an Altair, then quickly moved to SWTPC 6800s. On the SWTPC you could type the boot loader in with hex characters (that was an option for the Altair as well IIRC but we had moved to SWTP boxes by then anyways:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800

http://www.pc-history.org/swtpc.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWTPC

We were using the PCs mostly as consoles to set up and run some more specialized equipment - a TI 9900 doing geometry processing (it had 16-bit HW multiply and divide which was pretty awesome for a microprocessor back than) and a 6x4 array of 6502s doing pixel processing. I think it was the first real-time VR system in Canada at the time.

That's the chipset used in the SNES I think. It was pretty neat because it was the first microprocessor fast enough to support rotating the viewport. For it's day it was pretty cool stuff. It allowed a kind of pseudo 3d using an isomorphic viewport with overlayed tiling that could rotate in a way that sort of looked 3 dimensional.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5u9nD_I0I

Not bad at all for 1.8mhz.