asciilifeform: this, recall, is the universe on which chuck moore built not only ic, but entire tooling for his fab.
asciilifeform: folks like to talk about 'printed' this and that, but the actual hard data on the ground are considerably more optimistic for classical problems like 'lead to gold', 'elixir of immortality', and 'energy too cheap to meter' than for desktop chip-fab.
asciilifeform: i bet the ee labs are already providing gratis fab & debug service for those
asciilifeform: jurov: i can 'decide' all i want' 'spirit is willing but flesh is weak' in this case. unless you'd like to contribute $100B for a fab and an army
asciilifeform: better example of 'middle'. my local uni has a 1980s-style ic fab. just sitting there.
asciilifeform: they only appear complicated because 1) folks slept through school 2) lack of popular access to chip fab tech translates to lack of interest in even the most elementary aspects of engineering
asciilifeform: it costs $1B because there are six people who can honcho a fab
asciilifeform: the 'fab costs $1B' is merely a -symptom- of the real problem
asciilifeform: (and do we consider refining the si to be part of fab process? my understanding is that it is usually done by separate firm, devoted to it. and how many are there of these ?)
asciilifeform: one of the reasons why si fab costs what it does is that many of the necessary components are made in 2, 3, locations globally
asciilifeform: just the 'palace economy' you inherently get, from a chip fab costing what it costs☟︎
asciilifeform: hence why ru missile controllers are built using ancient soviet arch, yes, but the fab is winblows-controlled and the design turns from circuit to mask also in winblows☟︎
asciilifeform: as for the free world, it has -not one chip fab- to its name☟︎
asciilifeform: the secret to killing intel (in the sense of crafting a replacement which pushes the bits -that actually need pushing- at competitive speed at competitive cost) is to ditch x86 and even unix, all the way to von neumann; then can use si fab processes circa 1994 or so
asciilifeform: and especially not if they had used actual ab initio fab instead of 'hard copy fpga'
asciilifeform: nubbins`: if they merely collected and sat on the money, there could have been no question of covering fab costs
asciilifeform: could probably come up with a fab. in time...
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu might imagine that the fab is a largely automatic affair, but this is not so
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: try to recall the thread where we illustrate that the entire extant ic fab ecosystem sits on two or three winblows-only turdwares that's easily 10,000 man-years each
asciilifeform: decimation: and it would be baking in my personal fab
asciilifeform: even chinese 'loongson' is built with american w4r4z fab tools.
asciilifeform: on the flip side, all the folks who laughed at me for slowly grunting to build own p&p fab, can begin to consider stopping laughing now...
asciilifeform: then the question of what changes he ought to slip into the masks at the fab becomes absolutely trivial
asciilifeform: the gas is merely one of 1,000 reasons why the fab costs what it does.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: read the ClF3 link again, notice that it is used in si fab solely for cleaning tools.
asciilifeform: (but not enough for a legit commercial fab to turn a profit unless 'favourite son')
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: thread was re: whether and how one could build a reasonable computer without access to ic fab or the output of one
asciilifeform: we don't necessarily need to 'shrink the classical fab'
asciilifeform: the only thing that seems certain imho is that starting from existing concept of ic fab is a dead end☟︎
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: hypothetical chip fab experiment does not require new computer.
asciilifeform: it does no good to take extant ic fab practice and work 'down'☟︎
asciilifeform: PeterL: any fab process that requires clean room is ipso facto irrelevant to the question of 'home fab'
asciilifeform: chip fab << i've been doing some (mostly theoretical) work on the subject, for some years. it's a guilty pleasure of mine.
asciilifeform: as in, there is not a 'free world' si fab.
asciilifeform: every year i go to my local university's tech exhibit. there is always this one greybeard who runs their si fab, and he has some old wafers, etc. he also has a 'look in this box and press red button.' inside: svga display with graphics demo. the stamp on the box is some time in the '90s.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i can't imagine a home chip fab would smell much better.
asciilifeform: unless some fundamental discovery enabling cellar chip fab were to be made
asciilifeform: if you had cheap chip fab, there would not even be much reason to build fpga !
asciilifeform: JorgePasada: yes. chip fab, energy/cooling planet, mining house - in one facility.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: that one's for when you built a Si fab
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: ahahaha, yeah, that'll buy me a silicon fab and decade of paid free time, sure.
asciilifeform: even the gate libraries used by extant semiconductor fab houses would have to be thrown.
asciilifeform: i'd even dare to guess that the much-hyped ic fab diddling does indeed take place - but through...
asciilifeform: TheNewDeal: it's a snapshot of gerber mask. if he's crazy enough he could send this out for fab.
asciilifeform: likewise, luring people into preorders to fund a chip fab project almost makes sense. but boards?
asciilifeform: 500k btc -> i build cuprous oxide fab in bucky dome in back yard.
asciilifeform: (afaik miner folks are entirely innocent of any kind of innovation in silicon fab, only chumpatronics)
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: for pcb fab only (where such is typical) or smt placement?
asciilifeform: much easier, but very similar problem - home ic fab
asciilifeform: benkay: no matter what you do, resistance heat coils are still cheaper - if only because nobody cancelled thermodynamics (look up how many joules it takes to fab even 1970s silicon.)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: do you own a chip fab? does it fit in your house? why, or why not? using the term "printing" for photomask fabrication is disingenuous.
asciilifeform: all of the Bitcoin-like altchains are doomed, because the first serious guy with a semiconductor fab will own the world. SlaveCoin is the future!
