[Libre-soc-dev] silicon catalyst starting in canada

[Cole Poirier]

On Sunday, October 18, 2020, Staf Verhaegen <staf at fibraservi.eu> wrote:
>
>
> Personally I think if you want to understand ASIC development I think
> it is better to study the datasheets/manuals of the proprietary EDA
> tools and try to understand all techniques they currently use in
> production rather than chasing the next fancy paper or start-up. All
> IMHO of course.
>

Thanks Staf, that’s very helpful, and very nice to be able to benefit from
your experience and wisdom as an expert who has been doing ASIC development
for a long time and can tell me where I can start to have some
understanding myself.

I really want to stress however that I wasn’t chasing this, I just lacked
any ability to understand whether this was in fact an iteration on standard
practices or something totally new and wacky. I am totally and utterly
unqualified to chase anything :) That’s why I asked about it here because I
knew you, and the other list members would know in about two seconds. So,
when I said initially that is was potentially worth pursuing, I meant that
I saw that it was a low-power ‘thing’, went “oh we want our chip to be low
power! Maybe this is relevant to us? I’ll ask the experts on the mailing
list because I wasn’t able to understand more about this ‘thing’ than that
it’s related to low power electronics.”

Since you explained why this isn’t useful and what we should pursue
instead, I now have a marginally improved understanding of ASIC design, and
some good places to start. The last thing I would do is argue with you
about this, because what do I know? Precisely nothing about electronics and
ASIC design, but thanks to to I’m learning something about it so perhaps in
the future I will be able to determine the irrelevance of something similar
without assistance.

Cole