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ftldjs
Journeyman III

Start up hardware company using AMD processors

Hi,

I wish to design and manufacture my own motherboards for AMD Epyc Processors.

I also wish to design a co-processor to sit on the Infinity Fabric interconnect (based on Synopsys CCIX?).

Where do I start?  What department of AMD do I approach? What support can AMD give a start up based in England, UK?

I look forward to hearing from anyone that can start to point me in the right direction.

Many thanks, David.

13 Replies

Nice Idea.

Good luck.I wish you all the luck in the world.

Do you have lots of  $$$/£££ behind you either in Private Funds /  Angel Investment / VC Funding?

Getting access to the professional CAD tools and IP alone will will likely prove very expensive indeed.

If you don't have the £££/$$$ behind you already then you will likely need to look for Open Source CAD Tools.

The Open Source CAD Tools could well prove to be a nightmare in real world production environment and not up to the job at all.
If you are accessing Professional EDA tools through a University Program then be very careful to check the License Agreement and you will likely find that you cannot legally use these tools for your own Start Up because the licenses are made available to student to learn and/or for University Projects only. 
If you are trying to create a Start Up whilst you are at University then be careful to check that the University doesn't own anything and everything you invent.

Be very careful about patenting anything if you are a single person startup with limited funds.
Posting more details on what your idea is on a public forum like this is not advisable either.

RE: I also wish to design a co-processor to sit on the Infinity Fabric interconnect.
So in this case how will you even get access to the required Silicon Technology Files for your target process?
Do you have an account with TSMC/Chartered?

Do you have experience in IC Design?


The reality is that breaking into the Board design/ IC design business as a single person will be extremely difficult.

If you do have answers to all of the above points that mean you can have a viable Start Up business,  can I join your Start Up please?

If you don't then If I were you I would look into another software only business as the initial investment on that side is much lower.

Cheers.

0 Likes
ftldjs
Journeyman III

Thanks colesdav,

I have always had a interest in AMD interconnects such as Hypertransport ( I visited the Symposium in Mannheim many moons ago ) and more recently PLX/Avagao ExpressFabric and their uses in hyper scale products.  Recently I have been working on an Intel based motherboard & backplane product.  I have the funds in place to take this through to a small batch production - a board manufacture is working on this for me now.  I may look to crowd funding later in the year to see if it could be a viable desktop cluster / mass market product.

The Epyc is interesting to me in regards to socket-to-socket architectures.  The Infinity Fabric looks like it could be an implementation of CCIX  http://www.ccixconsortium.com/ - The description appears to fit. Synopsys recently announced their IP for CCIX https://www.synopsys.com/designware-ip/interface-ip/ccix.html - AMD and more interestingly Xilinx are members of the consortium.  The Virtex UltraScale+ with CCIX and HBM capability are compelling, if not costly.

IC business - maybe later! 🙂

Sounds great.

RE: a board manufacture is working on this for me now.

OK ... So in this case you might want to reconsider your patents situation. You sound like you know what you are doing but just in case ...
If you do want to patent anything to protect your invention / IP you will need to have any patents in place before anything goes into production.
If you are talking to another Company / Board manufacturer ... make sure you do so under an NDA.
If you are using Opensource / Free Software to make / design your product make sure you check the license agreement about anything you produce using it.

There are many cases of original inventors having their ideas "borrowed" in history, and it still happens.

You need to be very careful. 

Maybe someone from AMD will read this post and point you to someone in AMD you might be able to talk to to get some help and advice on who to talk with.

I am interested in an Epyc and the Vega Frontier Edition products also but more on the  on the software/programming side.

RE: IC business - maybe later! 🙂

Maybe you will make it to that stage.

I hope you can.

Bye.

dipak
Big Boss

Hi David,

Thank you for showing this interest. Let me check who might help you in this regard. I'll come back to you shortly.

Regards,

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dipak
Big Boss

I've sent you a PM. Please check your inbox.

Regards,

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Do you work for AMD???

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Yes, I do.

Thanks for helping out.
It's good to see someone from AMD respond so quickly.

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Hi,

I am in a similar position, wishing to build a motherboard for Epyc CPUs.

I would also like information on whom to talk to. I am currently based in Singapore.

Thanks in advance.

0 Likes
marcusbarnet
Journeyman III

Hello guys,

we are considering to design a small board based on AMD CPU for our robotics products.

In particular, we would like to design a board powered by AMD able to include sensors like IMU, GPS and current-meters.

We would like to know if AMD can support this kind of projects or not.

Can you give us more information, please?

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Hi Marcus Barnet, Tim Carpenter,              

Thanks for showing this interest. Please send me a PM with more details about your company, work, kind of supports you are looking for etc. so I could forward it to the concerned team.

Regards,

Dipak

Hello dipak, thank you for your answer.

I've sent you a PM.

0 Likes

Yes, I got it. Thank you.

Regards,