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A comment on Jeff Dean Responds to EDA Industry about AlphaChip. Parent comment

Re:Jeff Dean Responds to EDA Industry about AlphaChip by lobochrome on Sunday December 01, 2024 @12:55AM (#42286517)
Agreed, in particular on #2

Given infinite time and compute - maybe the approach is significantly better. But that’s just not practical. So unless you see dramatic shifts - no one is going to throw away proven results on your new approach because of the TTM penalty if it goes wrong.

The EDA industry is (has to be) ultra conservative.

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Re:Jeff Dean Responds to EDA Industry about AlphaChip by throwaway2037 on Sunday December 01, 2024 @01:42AM (#42286706) 

    > The EDA industry is (has to be) ultra conservative.
What is special about EDA that requires it to be more conservative?
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Re:Jeff Dean Responds to EDA Industry about AlphaChip by achierius on Sunday December 01, 2024 @09:18AM (#42288566)
Taping out a chip is an incredibly expensive (7-8 figure) fixed cost. If the chips that come out have too many bugs (say because your PD tools missed up some wiring for 1 in 10,000 blocks) then that money is gone. If you're Intel this is enough to make people doubt the health of your firm; if you're a startup, you're just done.
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