The quest for homemade microelectronics

Every day we stray closer to Botnet. Fixing *software* only means delaying the inevitable; unless we can create *hardware* ourselves, there can be no victory for us. 3D-printers can already make circuit boards, but nothing that can approach modern computing power; for that, we need something completely different. In this thread we discuss the feasibility of a desktop CPU-maker that allows the owner to produce a microchip with a performance at least comparable to that of the best PCs from the year 2006. Pic related is an hypothetical model of the device; yes I know it's probably incomplete, but it serves to give you a basic idea of what I have in mind. What's keeping us from making something like this, and what can we do about it?

>>89013 P.S.: the proposed model is loosely based on the currently used nanofabrication technologies, but they don't necessarily need to use those; any technology is fine as long as it can make something with the mentioned performance, and the production device is no bigger than a regular 3D-printer (please notice this is exclusively intended for personal use, not mass production).

I would like to see something like this being available, but the chances are very slim as it doesn't appeal. It will likely be crushed by those in the industry who currently create our hardware

check out hackerfab. they're essentially doing exactly what you describe but in multiple machines instead of one

>>89013 I think we should settle for lower standards for a starter. The first versions of Unix where developed and used on a PDP-7, Plan9 was developed in the early 80s and had an graphical interface, and the first Macintosh ran on an M68K with a GUI that's perfectly usable to this day. The latter even has new software developed for it today! The state of software made us feel like we need much more resources than what we actually do. A 16-bit processor like the 68k would already be more than enough to begin with. >>89020 That's interesting, I'll be following them, it's good to know that someone is already trying.

>>89020 Excellent, this is the kind of people we need