Designing Silicon From Scratch

Comments · 649

• BR

  @BreakingTaps · 8 days ago · pinned

  Folks are interested in how I made the circuit visualizations! Short answer: Blender + LibreLane + Python duct tape<br><br>Longer answer: I ran the code snippets through a full librelane build to get the complete GDS file and cell layout information DEF files, then used some throwaway python scripts to extract the important layers and convert them into 3D meshes which were imported into blender. The activity data was collected by writing a cocotb test that exercised the circuits to collect waveforms, and ngspice simulations to get real device sim data, and munged together to generate circuit activity. There were some simplifications made here (i.e. cells are treated as a monolithic entity rather than animating the wires/junctions/etc inside each cell) and then used to key the Blender animation. Finally rendered with Cycles in Blender.<br><br>Some of the flickering you can see is from Cycles, and some is from simulation data not being perfectly &quot;smooth&quot;. Definitely room to improve for future videos!

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• EY

  @EyesOfByes · 10 days ago

  &quot;Fine, ill do it myself&quot; has reached new peak.

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• AL

  @AlanW · 10 days ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6ytRHaTEXI&amp;t=70">1:10</a> - reminds me of a famous quote<br><br>&quot;We do these things, not because they are easy, but because we thought they would be easy.&quot;

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• CH

  @Chimaera32 · 10 days ago

  “I hope some of this was interesting”<br>My man, every second of every video you post is <b>beyond</b> interesting; this was no exception (the visualizations/animations were especially cool). Congrats on getting your own silicon! Heading over to fill out the BTTAP form now…

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• HO

  @Hoffa1337 · 10 days ago

  Yeah we&apos;re gonna need about 100 more videos in this series, super interesting to see!

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• OP

  @OpreanMircea · 10 days ago

  Waw, your factorio base looks crazy

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• TI

  @TinyTapeout · 10 days ago

  Thanks for the shout out!

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• KI

  @KingCovfefe · 10 days ago

  This video has me dangerously believing that chip design could be an almost feasible hobby.<br>I just need to repress common sense screaming in the back of my brain that there ain&apos;t a chance.

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• IL

  @illuminum8576 · 10 days ago (edited)

  Yeeeees, also 1 month is insane, don&apos;t we love the easy and accessible chip design

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• BU

  @buckstarchaser2376 · 10 days ago

  Remember that all gates are also LEDs and thus Phototransistors. The clear window on your chip can allow errors due to light penetration.

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• SP

  @spade-lang · 10 days ago

  This is absolutely one of the coolest things that have happened in Spade land so far!<br><br>Amazing video too, I&apos;ve see much worse intros to digital logic from people who teach this stuff. And those visualizations are incredible 👀

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• IT

  @iTeerRex · 10 days ago

  Very ambitious project to start from SCRATCH and finish within a month.

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