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Or working with a 40M Loc codebase started in the 80s with 50% code duplication. Because it's so mission critical that nobody really touches existing code. Or that everything needs to be rubber-stamped by a ton of people and even a rename takes months to make it in the codebase. Oh well. That's probably every enterprise

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As somebody without any experience in that field: When you say "codebase", what is that? Is it code describing circuit blocks (e.g. an ALU) that is reused in different projects or is it code for the tools that you use? (in-house tools, plugins for commercial tools, etc.)

There are several machines required to make a chip, and many steps involved. Those machines are crazy complex and accurate (i remember having a precision of around 3 atoms of silicon, femtometer scale). I meant firmware fot these machines, in general. Crazy complex (and amazing) tools with complex software

That's probably every enterprise

Yep, pretty much any industry or individual organization that's been around for 40 years will have decades-old cruft complicating attempts to make changes. That's why it's good to have some sort of skunkworks unit as well.

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