2024 might be the breakout year for efficient ARM chips in desktop and laptop PCs.

  • fubarx@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    How long before indie devs can make their own custom processor chips?

    • stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      Now? FPGAs have been a thing for decades and are the closest thing I can see to getting custom chips made without massive investments.

      • fubarx@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        Yup. But was thinking more of ultra-small-run ARM or RISC-V processors. Be cool if we ever get there.

        • StarDreamer@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          10 months ago

          You can build a risc core using an fpga. Plenty of people have done that.

          Performance will probably be an issue.

    • sir_reginald@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      do you know how a CPU is designed? it’s just crazy hard to study the design of simple RISC CPUs we studied in college. And those were very simple, old processors.

      A modern processor with performance that can match modern CPUs is no task for one indie dev, at all.

      You need a team of professionals in the field, a huge budget and the technology to manufacture it, which you would probably end outsourcing to one of the big manufacturers anyway because it’s very rare.

      So the answer to your question is never, unless you’re expecting low performance CPUs based on FPGAs.