Re: gEDA-user: transition of pcb internal units to metric (SI, mm)

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On 08/02/11 09:20, Markus Hitter wrote:
> 
> Am 08.02.2011 um 08:44 schrieb rickman:
> 
>> Do you expect these tools to be used to design chips costing far, far
>> over $3 Million just for the mask set?
> 
> I'm trying to think 20 years into the future. Especially if it's only a
> matter of allowing a compile time flag or not.
> 
> 
> Markus
> 
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> Dipl. Ing. (FH) Markus Hitter
> http://www.jump-ing.de/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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First off, is PCB in its current state even remotely usable for chip
design (sincere question - I have no idea what actually goes into that),
and if not, are there any plans to change that in the near future? If
the answer to both questions is "no", then I don't see any problem.

As for 20 years in the future, that's a /long/ time (as is anything else
over 10 years or so, really). I personally don't think ensuring
compatibility with something that far away is worth causing problems on
lower-end hardware now.

Seeing as 32-bit operating systems (even on 64-bit machines!) are still
widely used, and anything smaller than a nanometre is overkill for the
time being, I'd say playing nice with 32-bit is, at the moment, more
important than making sure people can design chips that can't even be
manufactured for another decade or two anyway.

Besides, what, ultimately, is to stop the user from simply printing the
design at 1:1000 scale? If you're doing something that exotic, the
default footprints won't be any good anyway, and if you're creating new
ones, you can just as easily create them at 1000 times the actual size
and tape-out the final design at 1:1000 scale.



Peter


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