Author Topic: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.  (Read 19199 times)

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Offline donotdespisethesnake

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #50 on: January 11, 2020, 04:38:18 am »
So THIS is how those clueless KickStarter projects get born. I often wondered.  :palm:

Obviously, the first thing you need to get people on board is some people skills. Find the right people, and listen to what they saying. Telling the engineers how to do their job never works out.

Maybe the OP needs to post to that other widely respected electronics forum were the real experts are, instead of nay saying fools  ::)
Bob
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Offline daqq

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #51 on: January 11, 2020, 07:47:38 am »
When last time Europeans (nations occupying Europe geographically) made an Asic with more than 100 transistors ? Simple question.

Edit: I mean NEW asic design
Ignoring the fact that there are several major semiconductor manufacturers based in Europe (ST, AMS...), have foundries (Global foundries, ST, AMS, On Semiconductor, Ti...), have R&D offices here (even more), then that only leaves the little players. Given that that sort of thing happens pretty often, I'm guessing last Tuesday.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2020, 07:51:55 am by daqq »
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Offline unitedatoms

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #52 on: January 11, 2020, 07:58:43 am »
@daqq. Thank you. I did not know. And I am exaggerating. BTW, I checked and found that Global foundries is US company. Never heard about them. Anyway. I do not see Europe as a place where any new semiconductor development is happening. It is just a perception of random internet person. Not a true fact. You presented facts, I looked and saw.

Well. In my world, there is no NEW semiconductor development happening in anywhere except USA or perhaps South Korea. Nothing. May be all those silicon developers in Europe are attending their jobs, work, come back home. And no effect is felt anywhere. The progress of things in 21st century is pathetic. The guys in Europe are faking each to other, because they have learned how to fake the things recently. In USA the fakery was popular and was quickly unlearned long before.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2020, 08:03:17 am by unitedatoms »
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Offline daqq

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #53 on: January 11, 2020, 08:11:38 am »
@daqq. Thank you. I did not know. And I am exaggerating. BTW, I checked and found that Global foundries is US company.
Yup, with foundries and R&D offices all over the world. They Like most notable semiconductors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlobalFoundries#Fabrication_facilities
Well. In my world, there is no NEW semiconductor development happening in anywhere except USA or perhaps South Korea. Nothing.
Must be an interesting world where China, Israel and a host of other places do not exist.
And no effect is felt anywhere. The progress of things in 21st century is pathetic.
Yeah, I mean, we just have the equivalent of a supercomputer of the year 1995 in our pocket, there are 10+ GSPS COTS ADCs out there, and 16GB of RAM is common. Where's my damn' flying, semi-sentient AI controlled, brain connected car!?
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Offline Kilrah

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #54 on: January 11, 2020, 09:12:09 am »
Chances are that established players would rather collectively boycott you and shut you down with patents. They have their own special snowflake SOCs, IPs and "differentiating" features which they aren't sharing with anyone.
That is like saying that Apple will boycott me if I try to design an OS.
They would not boycott/sue you for designing an OS, but put anything they have a patent on in either intentionally or by mistake and they'll jump on you right away.

Point is, it's likely you can only make a relatively simple IC that might not be stellar, becasue all the little tricks that can make it better are patented.
 

Offline iMo

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #55 on: January 11, 2020, 09:25:06 am »
Back to the topic before Dave closes this thread :)

13y back you would hardly expect you may get 16ch logic analyzer with 200MHz sampling rate for $50 incl shipping. I was the early adopter of the OLS - one of my best investments - after the hw was created (and still sold afaik) it took the community 1-2y to fine tune and enhance the fw in the fpga and mcu, and another ~5y of rather slowish development of the client app. Now you have a capable LA handy.

If somebody produced an open sourced hw on say 10x5cm 4 layer pcb with 2ch 1-2Gs/s, 8bit res, FPGA+256MB ram and an usb connectivity for say $50 incl shipping, I would bet the community will do a steep learning curve and in 1-2y you would have an useful instrument handy. GUI in the PC/tablet.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2020, 09:39:12 am by imo »
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Offline donotdespisethesnake

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #56 on: January 11, 2020, 11:41:09 am »
If somebody produced an open sourced hw on say 10x5cm 4 layer pcb with 2ch 1-2Gs/s, 8bit res, FPGA+256MB ram and an usb connectivity for say $50 incl shipping, I would bet the community will do a steep learning curve and in 1-2y you would have an useful instrument handy. GUI in the PC/tablet.

The "Open Bench Logic Sniffer" is not actually Open Source, despite the description. It has max sampling rate of 200MHz. There is not going to be a $50 incl shipping board meeting the specs you describe, that's just a dream.

Talking of Dave, the OP should ask him to run through the proposal and give his opinion.
Bob
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Offline ogden

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #57 on: January 11, 2020, 12:28:10 pm »
Well. In my world, there is no NEW semiconductor development happening in anywhere except USA or perhaps South Korea. Nothing. May be all those silicon developers in Europe are attending their jobs, work, come back home. And no effect is felt anywhere.
Ever heard of ARM?
 

Offline aheid

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #58 on: January 11, 2020, 12:32:02 pm »
If somebody produced an open sourced hw on say 10x5cm 4 layer pcb with 2ch 1-2Gs/s, 8bit res, FPGA+256MB ram and an usb connectivity for say $50 incl shipping, I would bet the community will do a steep learning curve and in 1-2y you would have an useful instrument handy. GUI in the PC/tablet.

What kind of ADC would you put in that thing? Cheapest name-brands I can find blows the $50 budget for just the ADC alone, for example the HMCAD1511 used in the Siglent SDS-1104x scope[1] is $49 per 100 qty and that cuts down to 500 Msps when running two channels. Then again, I'm just a n00b so curious what else is out there.

edit: Just for fun I checked the FPGA used in that scope[2], it's about $120 in low quantities[3]. So just between the ADCs and FPGA the BOM cost is half the price of the scope. Though if post-processing and display etc is handled elsewhere, I assume a much cheaper FPGA can be used.

[1]: https://youtu.be/Kay4Jk2DHuE?t=532
[2]: https://github.com/360nosc0pe/fpga/blob/master/projects/sds1104xe/create_project.tcl#L20
[3]: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/xilinx-inc/XC7Z020-1CLG484C/122-1850-ND/3925759
« Last Edit: January 11, 2020, 12:43:53 pm by aheid »
 

Offline unitedatoms

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #59 on: January 11, 2020, 01:19:33 pm »
Well. In my world, there is no NEW semiconductor development happening in anywhere except USA or perhaps South Korea. Nothing. May be all those silicon developers in Europe are attending their jobs, work, come back home. And no effect is felt anywhere.
Ever heard of ARM?

ARM is not a semiconductor company, also its Japanese.

My point is that for certain industries there is certain geographies. I see someone (lets make it exact, some German person) out of place, then it causes a dissonance. I start to re-evaluate what do I know about this kind of relevance. Say if someone in 1960s in Liverpool UK nonchalantly suggests to roll a music band, I do not see a dissonance, because it is their local culture, the industry, that's what they do. When I see a German pushing for IP project I can not connect few dots, there is some dissonance. It is not how such person is supposed to look like. There is some underlying lie there. And I can not put a finger on it and start throwing random pokes. Was is that fact that credentials are based on fact that his father is Queen of England who bakes semiconductors every Friday, or some arithmetical quantities of dollars in high thousands or millions even. Something does not look natural. And I have to wake up and try to fugure out what place or time or person I did expect to be in such position.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2020, 01:41:28 pm by unitedatoms »
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Offline ogden

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #60 on: January 11, 2020, 01:41:27 pm »
Well. In my world, there is no NEW semiconductor development happening in anywhere except USA or perhaps South Korea. Nothing. May be all those silicon developers in Europe are attending their jobs, work, come back home. And no effect is felt anywhere.
Ever heard of ARM?

ARM is not a semiconductor company, also its Japanese.
ARM is UK company based in Cambridge, developing semiconductors in Europe.
 

Offline unitedatoms

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #61 on: January 11, 2020, 01:42:20 pm »
Well. In my world, there is no NEW semiconductor development happening in anywhere except USA or perhaps South Korea. Nothing. May be all those silicon developers in Europe are attending their jobs, work, come back home. And no effect is felt anywhere.
Ever heard of ARM?

ARM is not a semiconductor company, also its Japanese.
ARM is UK company based in Cambridge, developing semiconductors in Europe.

They develop papers. And owned by Japanese. And I am exagerrating
« Last Edit: January 11, 2020, 01:44:51 pm by unitedatoms »
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Offline ogden

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #62 on: January 11, 2020, 01:52:40 pm »
Well. In my world, there is no NEW semiconductor development happening in anywhere except USA or perhaps South Korea. Nothing. May be all those silicon developers in Europe are attending their jobs, work, come back home. And no effect is felt anywhere.
Ever heard of ARM?

ARM is not a semiconductor company, also its Japanese.
ARM is UK company based in Cambridge, developing semiconductors in Europe.

They develop papers. And owned by Japanese. And I am exagerrating
Japan owns biggest part of US public debt as well. So what?
 

Online Marco

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #63 on: January 11, 2020, 02:01:16 pm »
ADCs really show the death of discretes. The integrated ADCs in my cable modem would probably cost 10x the modem to buy discrete.

Anyone with volume does it themselves, what's left is just too small not to get ravaged by boutique prices. Ah well, can't always be lucky when hitchhiking ...
« Last Edit: January 11, 2020, 02:08:29 pm by Marco »
 

Online wraper

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #64 on: January 11, 2020, 04:29:56 pm »
They develop papers. And owned by Japanese. And I am exagerrating
They develop silicon design for particular manufacturing processes which can be integrated into chips. And then it likely will be produced at TSMC in Taiwan. Where BTW basically all discrete GPUs are made (Nvidia and AMD).
« Last Edit: January 11, 2020, 04:31:49 pm by wraper »
 

Offline daqq

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #65 on: January 11, 2020, 04:42:15 pm »
They develop papers. And owned by Japanese. And I am exagerrating
I'm not sure if it's best to scoff at fabless semiconductor companies, Xilinx, AMD, Nvidia, Quallcom, and many other are fabless, yet their influence is massive and their product lines are REALLY important. Developing IP is a MAJOR factor in the semiconductor industry. The majority of large companies are owned by other faceless international investment companies and funds (who in turn also have interesting ownership). ARM was sold to a similar company, SoftBank Group, it started in UK.

Quote
I see someone (lets make it exact, some German person) out of place, then it causes a dissonance.
Yes, a proper German person will not be dabbling in semiconductors, he will be eating schnitzels by the dozen whilst brewing craft beer and sneakily preparing to attack Russia.
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Online nctnico

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #66 on: January 11, 2020, 05:48:33 pm »
Well. In my world, there is no NEW semiconductor development happening in anywhere except USA or perhaps South Korea. Nothing. May be all those silicon developers in Europe are attending their jobs, work, come back home. And no effect is felt anywhere. The progress of things in 21st century is pathetic. The guys in Europe are faking each to other, because they have learned how to fake the things recently. In USA the fakery was popular and was quickly unlearned long before.
As stated before: there are many European chip developers. Not just big ones but also many smaller ones. Take FTDI for example. Many (like NXP for example) also have offices in China where they do development. And last but not least: the majority of the lithography equipment used for chip production comes from Europe.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline excitedboxTopic starter

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #67 on: January 11, 2020, 09:43:45 pm »
This guy doesn`t know that ARM is in the UK  :-DD

There are more semiconductor companies outside the US. Even the ones who are now in the US are in large part not US companies. LG, SAMSUNG, Toshiba, Western Digital etc are all Japanese, Korean, Chinese, German, English, Israeli, and so on. Most of the Engineering Labs that design 99% of the chips around the world are outside the US.

The US has maybe 10-12 Big companies that got big by buying up a bunch of companies to make 1. The rest of the industry is International.

And then people wonder why I don´t think this is the place for a project like this. Because these are the type of people that get to fill a thread with nonsense. Ignoring the fact that you can barely have a conversation on a forum let alone organize an ENTIRE COMPANY.

I think it is time to abandon this thread. I am gonna edit the first post with just contact info on how to get involved in this project and then the idiots can do what they want on the rest of the thread.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2020, 09:49:05 pm by excitedbox »
 

Offline excitedboxTopic starter

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #68 on: January 11, 2020, 09:57:02 pm »
Talking of Dave, the OP should ask him to run through the proposal and give his opinion.

That is a good idea. I agree $50 including shipping is way too low for anything containing a chip that is also useful for much higher end stuff.


I am still working on writing up a proper description of what the goal even is. The original post was just me asking peoples opinions which attracted all the 5 year olds, who can´t think anything besides the USA #1 propaganda they have been fed all their lives. I wish one of these days they will spend a few weeks outside the country and just realize how wrong they have been.
 

Offline ogden

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #69 on: January 11, 2020, 10:18:50 pm »
I think it is time to abandon this thread. I am gonna edit the first post with just contact info
Don't. By doing so you essentially will destroy this thread and show disrespect to those who spared their time to comment. [edit] Thou damage is already done. You already insulted many much more experienced forum members than you are. I will ignore you from now so you can live with your Dunning Kruger syndrome and dream your impossible dreams happily without my distraction :)
« Last Edit: January 11, 2020, 10:25:44 pm by ogden »
 
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Online nctnico

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #70 on: January 11, 2020, 10:20:17 pm »
I think it is time to abandon this thread. I am gonna edit the first post with just contact info
Don't. By doing so you essentially will destroy this thread and show disrespect to those who spared their time to comment.
I agree. This forum is a very good place to discuss and several good designs for test instruments have been born on this forum already.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline ebclr

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #71 on: January 11, 2020, 10:23:12 pm »
" then the idiots can do what they want "

If you leave the thread, the thread will be cleanup up of Idiots. Please do that
 

Offline ogden

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #72 on: January 11, 2020, 10:45:53 pm »
Whole post for archival purposes:

We keep seeing open source oscilloscope projects for several reasons. One reason is features that the big players are not providing such as good firmware. Lets face it though these open source projects are no better.

The big reason in my opinion is price though. Scopes and test equipment cost insane amounts of money. Which is why these open source scopes will never compete with the main players. In the last few years Rigol, Tektronix, Keysight, and Agilent have all spun their own Asics. In an article last year Keysight claimed that it brings the cost down to a point where they use the same chip in a $450 scope as their $45k scope.

Why is there no purpose built Oscilloscope SOC on the market? It seems like such a no brainer that since we all need scopes that that is one of the chips that is desperately needed. Over the last few years the cost of producing a custom chip design have come down dramatically. I have done some looking and it is much cheaper than what is wasted on these multi million dollar kickstarters that produce the Solar dehumidifier or graphene super heater that breaks physics. The NRE for a custom ASIC would be about 500k-1 million (I have seen much cheaper but lets be realistic  :-DD) but that is quickly recovered because the production cost would go down so dramatically after. If everyone that has bought one of the $700 Open Scopes or $650 RedPapaya etc. put even 1/3 of that money into kickstarter they could have a scope that performs on the level of a multi thousand dollar scope for the same price.

I propose a 2 prong solution. A fabless company/foundation to produce the chip and sell it in addition to offering the design at a very low licensing fee and a base design for free such as what arm does with their IP. The collected licensing fees can then be used to fund development of firmware development. The free design would allow anyone to benefit from it not just big companies with huge wallets.

The chip should be modular in design so it can be cut down for entry level, mid level designs. It should be adaptable for use in multiple test instruments to allow MSO, MDO, DSO all to use the same SOC. This way instruments no longer need to use expensive fpga chips which are only suited to the task because of their adaptability. It will cut down a lot of the development cost for the firmware as well, while also allowing anyone to modify or extend the firmware.

The dominant players in the industry have been selling us hardware and then charging us again to use it, with crazy expensive license fees for faster bandwidth or a signal generator, etc. that is already in the scope. Why should a $1k scope cost over $4k if you want all the features unlocked. They have been nickle and dimeing us worse than Apple.

They are holding back innovation by keeping the test equipment out of the reach of students, researchers, small companies, and individuals. We need to put a stop to it.


I think the first step would be to Form and Register a foundation or company to make something official. Then look for people with experience who would be willing to donate some time or work with the promise of getting paid at a later date. Then a more solid plan than my ramblings needs to be formulated which can be presented to companies who may invest into this endeavor so they can use the chip once complete. Once we generate some interest we can hammer down the specs for the design. During that time the rest of the team can develop a web presence and generate more interest around the project. When we get to a place where we are confident we can raise the money and have a design that fits enough peoples needs we can move to the funding stage. During that stage the design should be finished so that once the goal is reached we can do a first tape out.


Obviously this plan needs work and I have nowhere near the experience to lead a project like this but I would be happy to donate my time and skills in any way possible. At the very least I can make a website and make marketing materials in German and English. If it gets to a point where we meet with manufacturers I would also be able to meet with German manufacturers to push the project.

I have made a discord server for anyone interested in helping move this along. OScopeAsic is the server name.  [url]https://discord.gg/DVmNC3[/url]
 

Offline excitedboxTopic starter

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #73 on: January 11, 2020, 10:51:37 pm »
You mean I would be disrespecting the disrespectful idiots that keep wasting space by not reading and making the same baseless assertions repeatedly. Then disregarding any evidence disproving their assertions and nit picking hypotheticals as facts. Now they want to complain when I don´t want it to continue. Wasting my time. Anyone seeing this project for the first time would have to read through 3 pages of BS just to see where things stand. That will just drive people away.

As you can see any valid criticism has been treated with respect and considered. I appreciate those that do want to contribute. I invite anyone to join on discord in an effort to make this a reality. Even there I will have to set up multiple chats for public suggestions and discussions and true insiders and partners who will have access to confidential information. This thread holds no importance to this project and letting it die is the smart thing to do.

The main work for those designs did not happen on the forum. The forum is used for posting updates and discussion but not for doing the actual work. There is a big difference. If you can´t accept that Im sorry. Maybe you can convince Dave to conduct all discussions and work between him and colleagues/employees/partners on the forum. Even asking that is absurd. I am also not gonna spend hours each day arguing with people over which country has the bigger chip industry or the legality of exploiting DRM restrictions on software licenses.


If they don´t think an ASIC is needed, lets end the RISCV project too. we don´t need another processor we have Intel and AMD and they have been dropping prices recently anyway. Lets end all Linux development we have Windows and Win10 is free now. Wordpress (Runs 95% of all websites) is no longer needed, everyone can just code their entire site from scratch. :-DD




PS. Germany is the 4th largest electronics manufacturer.
https://www.trade.gov/topmarkets/pdf/Semiconductors_Germany.pdf




Good idea on archiving the original post. I would have forgotten to do that. Like I said anyone is welcome to join the discord as long as it remains productive.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2020, 10:54:13 pm by excitedbox »
 

Online tautech

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Re: Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope.
« Reply #74 on: January 11, 2020, 11:00:56 pm »
 :(
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