Hi guys, I build computer chip and I wanted to share this new tradition: once the chip blueprints have been sent to the factory (called tapeout) going to waffle house dressed fancy!
( details for those that are curious or want to help spread the tradition https://talesonthewire.com/projects/tapeout_tradition/ )
A few days ago I reached out on this subreddit for your worst 48 hour ASIC design ideas and you guys did a great job at providing some truly awful suggestions.
In the end I went with thegreatpotatogod's great suggestion of counting until the heat death of the universe.
So I build this design capable of counting for the next 10^(100) years and that broadcast a message over 100Mbps Ethernet with the current count every second.
The design is currently taped out, I am looking forward to getting it back in a few months and making it the new permanent addition to my homelab (until power surge do us part).
For those that are interested, I made a small write-up on it with all the existential dread I could muster: https://talesonthewire.com/projects/until_heat_death_do_us_part/
For those in the US: Happy 4th of July!
Do your worst, this is a serious request.
Update: I am going to go for a mix between the thegreatpotatogods and No_Crow8317s idea and design a counter that has enough bits to count until the heat death of the universe (technically also a random number generator). Also I will be making it return the counter value wrapped in an Ethernet frame every second because I don't have time for validating any firmware (and I like Ethernet).
Proof I am actually building it:
I am certain my fellow chip designers can relate to how beautiful SRAM's are.
Seriously considering printing this in HQ and framing it on the wall.
I call on the wisdom of this community: does an entirely open source switch exist?
And by "entirely" I mean to say I am not just talking about the software but also the hardware.
Which physical layers it supports doesn't matter, old 1kbps relics still count.
I was just wondering if there was ever one instance.
( not counting FPGA based switches unless the FPGA itself is open source )
Edit: Ideally the main ASIC would also be open source.
This is what being an idiot look like, let this be a cautionary tale.
Here is the long version : https://talesonthewire.com/thoughts/broken_doc/ but you can still shame me in the comments for not having run LVS without reading it.
I drew a pusheen on a silicon chip I am making.
Everything is extremely small in a chip and the pusheen is no exception. Here it is 50 um wide meaning you can fit this drawing 2,000 times in a centimeter.
I will defiantly be needing a microscope to see it and nobody will ever know it's there ^^
What else are you supposed to do with the extra area ?
( Layout targeting the SKY130A using the Tiny Tapeout sky26a shuttle. )