Ask HN: Are there any companies that are doing interesting work in hardware? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are there any companies that are doing interesting work in hardware?

29 pointsDracophoenix28 comments

Outside of ML/computer vision and processors, what companies are pushing the envelope in more esoteric domains of hardware?

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Check out JITX (SC18), it's using AI to automate circuit design. They are using a relatively unknown Stanza language for their CAD system.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17654865

[2]http://lbstanza.org/

I was about to shill!

Disclaimer: I'm an engineer at JITX. The core technology is a programming language for designs. It's a low level language for describing schematics and circuit boards, the kicker is that it's fully parametric and embedded into a high level language, which is stanza. The pitch I would give is that we're trying to do for hardware what GCC or NodeJS did for software engineering - everyone is hand coding assembly and manually checking it, we're building a compiler and set of libraries for getting things right and doing it fast.

I wouldn't just call it AI to automate circuit board design. We're definitely working on it and hiring folks for the tough optimization problems, but a lot of what we do is allow engineers to encode their expertise as reusable software components. I would say we're language and algorithm designers first, married to hardware designers.

For example, one of the cooler projects we did early in the pandemic was a mechanical keyboard designer that takes the JSON output of Keyboard Layout Editor and compiled it into a working circuit board and generated enclosure. I have it sitting in my office right now.

I may be overly biased but it's an awesome place to work. There are tons of interesting problems and great people. We have hardware experts designing boards, coming up with checks (think unit tests for hardware to automate design review), software folks doing our front end (a language server, custom VS Code extension to view circuit boards in a text editor), component selection, automatic placement, topological routing, web front end and backend, interesting and challenging DevOps, even real world compiler engineering - you name it. Every week is like the best course you've taken in CS - there so much to learn.

We're well funded and hiring. Since I joined in 2019 we've more than tripled in size and hiring! And frankly there's not many people working on this crucial problem. My email is in my profile if this sounds interesting to anyone.

There's only one open position on your web page.

Check out Oxide: https://oxide.computer

Very weird hiring process. They told me "we're interested in you, email us in a few months" and I did but apparently I had to apply through their website which requires a GitHub login. So I had to make a new GitHub account just to apply again. That's what the hiring people told me when I emailed them. Of course I didn't make a new account just for this, it's ridiculous.

You refused to create a GitHub account? I can understand having some sort of principle on this, but that seems like a small hill to die on if you want a job at a great company.

Why would a great company make you jump through hoops?

It’s a small hoop and if you can’t be bothered to do something as simple as create a GitHub account maybe you’re not the kind of person they’re looking for. It’s not like shit companies that literally will only accept applications if you have a LinkedIn profile. That’s a huge hoop literally asking you to post everything about your life on the public internet.

If you make it unnecessary difficult for great candidates to apply, then maybe you’re not the kind of company they’re looking for. What other thoughtless decisions are they making?

If creating a linkedin account means you will be publicly posting everything about your life then making a github account must also mean you will be publicly posting everything about your life. Two social media sites, just different names.

Making a GitHub account requires nothing personal being public.

> You refused to create a GitHub account?

As I read it, he refused to create another Github account to apply a second time when told to contact them again after a first application. (From GP: “So I had to make a new GitHub account just to apply again. That’s what the hiring people told me when I emailed them.”)

Requiring a GitHub account to apply is a small hoop (especially if it is a position that will require you to have a personal GitHub account that they can add to their organization if you are accepted.) Requiring another GitHub account each additional time you apply to a particular company is, OTOH, ludicrous.

It is a small hill, I was interviewing with other companies at the same time and at the end was hired. Otherwise I'd have time to make that weird github requirement and had time to interview with them.

While the news seems to focuses on ML and RISC-V, there is a huge amount of *other* activity in the silicon space. With [Google working to improve the open source EDA tools + PDKs while also providing free manufacturing](https://opensource.googleblog.com/2022/05/Build%20Open%20Sil...) there are lots of opportunities.

The "new" FPGA companies like GowinSemi and RapidSilicon are also creating some pretty cool parts.

not sure how specific you are about "interesting work in hardware" but this is the first thing that came to mind for me:

https://www.span.io/

total rethink of the humble electric panel.

If this had been around when I solared up my house I would have definitely done it.... A little hard to see doing it on it's own...

Their Careers page has no positions and no contact links.

OP didn't say they were looking for a job. Just asked about interesting hardware.

Eridan: https://eridan.io is doing really cool stuff in the RF hardware space. Main focus is telecom and 5G but there are tons of wireless applications when you redefine the architecture of a transmitter and do it in GaN

Yes, Currently looking for FPGA Design Engineers - multiple options. Please reach out.

Out of curiosity, do you use Verilog or VHDL in your designs?

Verilog

Is there a technical or economic reason to choose Verilog over VHDL or was this just a matter of preference?

We design custom silicon for doing molecular dynamics simulations for drug-discovery work: https://www.deshawresearch.com/technology.html

Defense

Working on software in defense sucked a fat one. The guys working hardware enjoyed it a lot more.

i would double this. i worked on various software for a smaller defense contractor and it mostly sucked and a lot of it never saw the light of day or one off r&d demos.

years later i ended up on the hardware side writing firmware for various hardware widgets (many truly defensive and life saving), and minor pcb and circuit design for smaller projects. it was very satisfying, tangible work

Past week there was news of: low power risc-v gpus, fpga-integrated sdr, aws quantum internet. It feels like the alien tech is slipping out the back door of the lab ;)

Google AI beats humans at designing computer chips

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03544-w

Silicon Catalyst is a global venture incubator with many hardware projects in progress.

ASML

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