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throwaway_3133on Efabless – Shutdown Notice

All eFabless designs for the first two years of the program were multi-project wafers with single-project chips. And they still required the management engine.

Over the past year they tried an experimental "multi-project chip" (first samples shipped 14 months ago). But the management engine was a requirement long before this happened.

GP seems to have edited their comment, but I can't edit mine (even though it is only 8 minutes old)

throwaway_3133on Efabless – Shutdown Notice

It's a multi-project wafer not a multi-project chip.

They cut the wafer apart into individual chips. There is one project on each chip.

This has been going on since the 1970s. It is a very well-understood process.

throwaway_3133on Efabless – Shutdown Notice

This is what happens when you advertise a shuttle run for "open source" designs, brazenly backdoor everybody's chips with a Management Engine (google "eFabless Caravel") and then, to top it all off, act like you can just show up at CCC and pretend everything is fine:

https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-the-design-decisions-behind-the-...

Video from 38c3 talk 2024-Dec-29; question at time 31min:17sec.

This company, and its enablers (formerly) at Google, set back the progress of open source chip design by at least three full years with this bait-and-switch insanity. The people who could see through the ruse wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole; meanwhile it sucked up all the students, momentum, and funding.

Think about what three years of progress is worth in the tech industry.