They finally made a chip. It's on 180nm: a node that chipmakers were on 18 years ago. To put into perspective, even eASIC retired their offering that was on 90nm node (2004-2005). University students regularly do deep sub-micron. SiFive targets modern nodes with micro-style cores running faster than this. I'm probably just going to keep recommending modern alternatives.
"AJIT is currently able to run one instruction per clock cycle and at speeds between 70-120MHz, but they expect to achieve 400-500 MHz clock speeds in the next upgrade. It's built on a 180nm technology, though that will eventually be bumped up to 65nm."
I thought the bigger problem with the claim was that it didn't mention that Intel did that with:
1. Ultra-expensive, full-custom design.
2. A massive budget from a massive amount of sales to fund No. 1.
Most ASIC's being made use standard cell wherever possible because the companies, even very profitable, either couldn't afford full-custom or didn't think the cost was worth it. The few that do it are kind of like elite class of chip makers with piles of money. So, it seems improper to compare what a smaller effort on low-tech nodes can do with an elite, chip maker on what was then cutting-edge node. Maybe smaller players can do it today with lessons learned, current tech, lower cost of labor, and so on. Still be skeptical.
Note: I am keeping up with old techniques and processes at 350nm and up for subversion-resistant chipmaking. We stopped being able to visually look for backdoors at around 250nm or so. That means chips that will be verifiable by large numbers of people will have to be above that. I think I'd get 100-400MHz like those in this article, though, given my counter-arguments above.
Everything you say is accurate, but, grad students have to start somewhere. If they can make a 65nm version that runs at say 500Mhz, that would be better. Remember that "real work" was done on desktops on a Sparcv8 chip that ran at 75Mhz or less.
Yeah, didn't Windows 95 run on 100 Mhz x86 processors? And Linux used to be blazing fast on it too (compared to today where Linux seems to be slower than Windows on the same hardware - yeah, I am looking at you Ubuntu).
