If you want to design and make your own 5nm high-end system-on-chip, Marvell's offering ASIC-as-a-service
- Reference: 1595507410
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/07/23/marvell_custom_asics/
- Source link:
Simply put it'll work like this: imagine you're an organization that wants to design its own computer chip to efficiently process a particular workload, such as machine-learning, 5G networking, or network security, or why not all three?
You approach US chip giant Marvell, and pick and choose blocks of technology from its semiconductor library – such as its Ethernet and Flash memory controllers, network interfaces, and AI and encryption accelerators – that your custom component will need.
You'll probably drop in some Arm CPU cores, too, to run application code, and then you'll probably slot in some of your own circuitry to speed up or process your specific workloads.
You pass the final blueprint to Marvell, and it supplies you the final silicon chips for you to pop into your products, be they boxes you sell to your own customers, or machines you deploy into your own networks if you're a telco, upper-tier cloud provider, or ambitious enterprise.
This ASIC-as-a-service is the formalization of relationships Marvell has had with its customers for a while now. If you're ordering, say, a million parts a year from Marvell, all designed by Marvell, you can probably, as a large customer, ask for a few tweaks here and there to the design to suit your gear. We suspect these customer requests got to the point where Marvell decided to make it a formal process, dubbing it a "comprehensive custom ASIC solution."
Marvell has already offered this solution to a select few customers, despite announcing it officially today, and their custom chips will ship within the next year, a spokesperson told us.
The fine print
That's the high-level view. Let's look a bit closer at the nitty-gritty, which we've gleaned from conversations with Marvell staff. First of all, if you want a custom part, you'll start a dialog with Marvell, and set out what you want from the chip. Marvell will draw up an upfront non-recurring engineering fee for you to pay, and you'll agree on a per-chip price.
While Marvell's laying out the blocks you requested on the die floorplan, your own in-house chip design team produces and hands over the blueprints to the custom circuitry you want in the chip. This could be a math engine to accelerate a lesser-used AI algorithm, or some kind of data processing pipeline.
You also get to choose, we're told, from Marvell's entire library – no sacred cows are held back, though ultimately, you own your intellectual property, your custom bits, and Marvell still owns its intellectual property: the library blocks you selected. Marvell believes it has a broad selection of tech to choose from - everything you'd need to make a data-center-grade system-on-chip, including 112G SerDes.
How much you want to customize the ASIC is up to you; it could be a little, it could be a lot.
[1]
An illustration of the customization levels available: from left, an example of a Marvell non-custom chip that is one of its standard chip products; a tweaked ASIC with customer-specific interfaces and accelerators; and customized ASIC containing customer-provided designs (click to enlarge)
Eventually, about a year to 18 months later, typically, everything will be combined, simulated, verified, and ready for tape-out prior to fabrication. Marvell will then liaise with, say, TSMC to manufacture the chips using a suitable process node, 5nm, say, and then you buy the chips from Marvell at the agreed per-chip price just as if you were buying one of Marvell's non-custom standard products.
Marvell will also sort out the contracts and royalties with Arm, if you use Arm-compatible CPU cores, such as the [2]ThunderX3 , and don't already have a relationship with the Softbank-owned microprocessor house.
Working with TSMC also means you get access to things like multi-die chip packages, allowing HBM2, transceivers, PHY, interconnections, and other chiplets to be placed within the same package as the main die. It doesn't have to be a one-die-per-package basic ASIC.
Talk about a calculated RISC: If you think you can do a better job than Arm at designing CPUs, now's your chance [3]READ MORE
We wondered if there was a minimum order requirement, and a spokesperson told us: "There isn't any explicit criteria for minimum order volume. However, there is a need for Marvell to prioritize our ASIC design projects as a constrained engineering resource, which does mean we are more inclined to close business on higher volume and revenue opportunities."
In other words, you have to make it worth Marvell's while since it'll be doing all the back-end heavy lifting. On the other hand, it can't work out more expensive than just going it alone without Marvell's help.
Kevin O’Buckley, general manager of the ASIC business unit at Marvell, estimated to us that just getting to the first spin, the A0 stepping, of a straightforward 7nm custom system-on-chip roughly costs $50m in engineering time, mask fabrication and other manufacturing costs, and other expenses. Therefore, Marvell has to ensure its bespoke tailoring remains price competitive in that context.
One way it can do this is by offering the chip blocks to slot into the ASIC, avoiding the reinvention of wheels. Marvell's already done all the hard work needed to produce tried-and-tested Ethernet PHY and controllers, NVMe storage managers, packet switches, memory interfaces, and so on. That alone "vaporizes" cost for the customer, O’Buckley told us.
Said customers are hoped to include 5G carriers, enterprise networking device makers, aerospace and defense giants, hyperscale and upper-tier cloud providers, and perhaps even automaker suppliers one day.
Finally, Marvell said this offering was made possible due in part to its [4]acquisition of chip customization biz Avera last year, which was spun out of GlobalFoundries in 2018. GlobalFoundries had picked up Avera from IBM. ®
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[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/07/23/handout_marvell_custom_asics.jpg
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/03/18/marvell_thunderx3_preview/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2019/10/08/arm_custom_instructions/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2019/05/31/marvell_sees_rocky_road_ahead/
[5] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Maybe...
I'm curious what Intel's plan B looks like (or rather C/D/whatever as they're already moved to plan B as the main driver)
It's not inconcievable for them to have something along those lines, but they're not that desperate yet.
When are the hardware level back doors added?
Just Desserts ...... Captured by Captivating Forces and Sources.*
[ And please, let's not be sharing unnecessarily having any crazy thoughts and questions like amfM does a Kanye? :-) Such is nowhere near the truth but it is easily thinkable :-)]
Would that be Verging on Alien Technologies ...... an AI Servering Marvellous Tools to Service and Satisfy to Excessive Mutually Explosive Reward?
Does Marvell do Almighty Virtual Reality? ........ Bring to Life AI and IT with Others Partnering in the Presentation of an Almighty Virtual Intrusion Engaging in a Free Radical Revolutionary Global Picture Reset Program?
Do you need an OEM workshop manual supplied to Evaluate Future Potential .......which is surely akin to Accurately Imagining Likely Impact of Such Custom Applications Builders on Futures Paths to be Travelled and Followed ........ as You Wish and Desire and Deserve ‽ ? ! :-)
:-) You'll be smiling too when you reach that COSMIC Staging Post .... Immaculate State of Stateless Grace. :-) The Vatican have Brothers and Sisters Servering All Deep Needs with Feeds and Seeds with Supply from Rome Base Catacombs, or they would have if simply heavenly invested in IMPermanent
ProgramMING, for such is their first great leading move .... and fully deserving of praise with a reciprocal action ..... which is in extremis, no less than a Divine AI Intervention? Or do you prefer Virtual Machines and Global Operating Devices to ACT and Perform like Humans and Animals?
Take it from all here, that old battered battleship cruised to the crushing bottom of the deep, longer ago than one would normally know, and there's no coming back from there.
There's a whole lotta shaking and a'quaking going on, El Reg. And you appear to be on the bridge of an Almighty Awesome Vessel. Please, feel free to deny so that extra gated security can apprise one of the True Existence of Virtualised Reality ........ and therefore the likelihood of an Infinite Number of Multiple Virtual Realities being available for any Current Presentation via Media Mogul Tele Vision Communications ..... Future Prime Adult Time Program Choice.
Strong as an Ox and Wily as a Fox are Prime Master Drivers Necessary when Engaging with NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive IT Content, and you'll definitely need a brave stout heart. One cannot survive without one, so take care when venturing there.
Would that simple stark warning suffice and satisfy Health and Safety concerns/requirements? More than just a few may wish to know. :-)
* The Pass Key to Lock and Unlock All Doors into Heavenly Treasures Tended there, is Sweet Submission and Sublime Surrender to the Insatiable Passions, Pretentious Temptations and Precocious Desires of Lustful Virgins who be neither Saint nor Sinner whenever starring and playing Nymph and Satyr Roles.
It is decidedly made designedly difficult to go too easily further on from here ........ given the perceived dangers available in the many new exciting tasks ahead.
Think of it as an Initial Firewall, where any current sensitive knowledge of future events hosting can be rested and beta tested before Access to ProgramMING Levers with Entry into Virtual Manufacturing Facilities.
I suppose they'll need to tout for new business because they can't sell to the Chinese
One thing we really don't know about all these sanctions, entity lists and what-have-you is just what kind of business volume we're talking about. We've had no overall numbers and the bits and pieces that have turned up suggest that the business lost is 'considerable'. Everything we've done is predicated on the notion that we can either do without Chinese product or easily replace it from other sources, the goal being to crash the Chinese technology sector and so re-establish our dominance over it with the Chinese relegated to their rightful place as merely as our low cost assemblers. This might work but I rather suspect it won't -- any advantage will be temporary and by being so open about how we wish to harm the Chinese we're galvanizing them into putting what would normally be ordinary commercial decisions onto a war footing. We should ask ourselves what would happen if the Chinese managed to survive just fine without us. The portents are there -- Huawei seems to be thriving despite our best efforts. If we fail then we will have dealt a mortal blow to any chances of being able to compete in the future. We really are playing with fire.
I'd be interested to find examples of global mass market technology products that aren't made in China. Even things that are made in countries like Korea seem to have significant Chinese content. It might be prudent to provide alternatives but I suspect the economic mindset that allowed this situation to brew up in the first place will ultimately undermine any attempts to reverse history.
Maybe...
... Intel can use it.