from Hacker News

Ask HN: Chip startups?

by icu on 8/26/22, 6:04 PM with 66 comments

Are there any start-ups in the chip space? I think this falls in the 'sounds like a bad idea' bucket, but could be potentially good idea.

  • by synergy20 on 8/26/22, 7:39 PM

    I work for one now, it's very challenging

        * very cash heavy(EDA tools, IP license, engineer wage, fab money,etc)
    * very challenging technically(balance of computation, power, size,etc)
    * lots of work needed on the software side(compiler,SDK,optimized libs,etc)
    It is in a totally different world comparing to MVP or the lean startup concept.

    Hardware(circuit board related) startup is already challenging(cash heavy, logistic challenges,etc), chip startup is 100x more. The later is about more than one hundred people with hundreds of millions investment to just get started.

  • by Centigonal on 8/26/22, 6:35 PM

    Lots of cool stuff in the hardware AI space

    https://sambanova.ai/ - Enterprise AI and dataflow-as-a-service for established moodels

    https://www.cerebras.net/ - AI accelerator, trying to compete with NVidia

    https://www.graphcore.ai/ - Another AI accelerator company - UK based

    https://femtosense.ai/ - Sparse NNs on very low power chips - cool hardware and software challenges

    https://sima.ai/ - ML accelerators for embedded applications

    https://ambiq.com/ - Not AI, but low power chips for wireless using some fancy tech that reduces energy leakage

    There are dozens more, these are just the ones I've heard of.

  • by solomatov on 8/26/22, 6:17 PM

    Of course there're. Couple of examples:

    - https://www.sifive.com/ - RISC-V related company

    - https://www.cerebras.net/ - Cerebras (AI accelerator)

    Both of categories has other players, these are just two notable examples.

  • by pveierland on 8/26/22, 7:15 PM

    Norwegian chip startups:

    - ONiO: Single-chip microcontroller with builtin energy harvesting and radio communication, enabling IoT devices without battery or dedicated charging.

    https://www.onio.com/

    - Ascenium: Software-defined CPU without an instruction set. Highly parallel architecture with extensive compiler integration.

    https://www.ascenium.com/

    - Disruptive Technologies: Single-chip compute + sensing with built-in battery for 10+ year operation.

    https://www.disruptive-technologies.com/

  • by Lind5 on 8/26/22, 6:31 PM

    Semiconductor Engineering does a monthly startup funding report. All are chip industry related

    https://semiengineering.com/knowledge_centers/startups/

  • by MontyCarloHall on 8/26/22, 6:54 PM

    Likely vaporware at this point, but no discussion of chip startups is complete without mentioning Mill Computing:

    https://millcomputing.com/

    It would represent a true architectural revolution if it ever actually came to fruition. Lots of past discussion on HackerNews over the decade(!) it’s been under development.

  • by illgenr on 8/27/22, 9:34 AM

    Plug for my startup, Ephemeraltronics.

    I'm designing an affordable electron microscope for high schools and small businesses. While that doesn't sound like a chip startup, the long term goal is to create multipurpose tools that enable semiconductor fabrication with electron beam milling and chemical vapor deposition.

  • by phlipski on 8/26/22, 7:00 PM

    https://mythic.ai/ - analog AI inference engines

    https://www.uhnder.com/ - radar on a chip

  • by frozenport on 8/26/22, 6:24 PM

    Currently living in a Cambrian explosion of AI chips: https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2019/01/23/2019-a-...

  • by 0xbadc0de5 on 8/26/22, 6:31 PM

  • by adapteva on 8/26/22, 8:09 PM

  • by systemvoltage on 8/26/22, 7:21 PM

    Any chip manufacturing startups? If not Fab, equipment, Fab software, etc?

  • by marcosdumay on 8/26/22, 7:29 PM

    > I think this falls in the 'sounds like a bad idea' bucket

    With enough funding, it's quite a good thing to work on. With Moore's law dead, the odds of success of weird chips got much better.

  • by polalavik on 8/26/22, 7:06 PM

    This thread reminded me of potato semi. which is always a good (but dead serious?) laugh.

    http://www.potatosemi.com/

  • by servitor on 8/26/22, 7:14 PM

    Rivos Inc. A RISC-V startup supposedly with many ex-Apple engineers.

  • by davidcox143 on 8/26/22, 7:12 PM

    Integrated Reasoning (S22) is building fast hardware for optimization problems.

    We currently target AWS F1 FPGA instances, and custom ASICs are on our roadmap.

    hn@ir.design

    https://ycombinator.com/launches/64273

    https://integrated-reasoning.com/

  • by new_user8675309 on 8/26/22, 8:43 PM

    For anyone interested in Ethernet PHYs, we are hiring! IPO'd early 2022, fast growing, and still a start-up environment

    https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3108025120/?refId=iI7RO%2...

  • by ov_ov on 8/26/22, 10:29 PM

    https://infiniteseconds.com/ ~ IP single-chip, energy harvest, sensing, flexible, low-power, IOT ready, in-house manufacturing, big infrastructure ready. "Paint your Night with Light".

  • by aclindsa on 8/27/22, 3:34 PM

    It's been around for a few years now, but probably still considered a startup: https://amperecomputing.com

  • by Symmetry on 8/26/22, 8:34 PM

    I worked for Ember for a while which was a startup that produced a ZigBee chip. It'll be hard to target cutting edge nodes but it can work. I left when they were eventually bought by Silicon Labs.

  • by ahmadmijot on 8/26/22, 6:42 PM

    Not chip the microchip manufacturing but the chip in chip design (IC design) space. I'm currently a part of startup in this area.

    It's so costly I don't know how other related startups can survive though.

  • by mkoryak on 8/26/22, 6:49 PM

  • by 0xPIT on 8/26/22, 8:24 PM

  • by stdcall83 on 8/28/22, 6:50 AM

    I'm working in one right now. www.neureality.ai

  • by humanwhosits on 8/26/22, 9:39 PM

    I can think of SiFive and Tenstorrent

  • by 7ero on 8/27/22, 8:33 AM

    join a fab

  • by runjake on 8/26/22, 6:28 PM

    I don't mean to be rude, but you could have Googled and gotten a pretty rich and interesting set of results:

    https://www.google.com/search?q=chip+startups

    I'm pretty impressed with the number of AI/neural network semiconductor startups right now.