+The lower pincount, lower power, and higher BGA pitch is all to reduce
+the cost of product development when it comes to PCB design and layout:
+
+* Above 4 watts requires metal packages, greater attention to thermal
+ management in the PCB design and layout, and much pricier PMICs.
+* 0.6mm pitch BGA and below requires much more expensive PCB manufacturing
+ equipment and more costly PCBA techniques.
+* Above 600 pins begins to reduce production yields as well as increase
+ the cost of testing and packaging.
+
+We can look at larger higher-power ASICs either later or, if funding
+is made available, immediately.
+
+Recent applications to NLNet (Oct 2019) are for a test chip in 180nm,
+64 bit, single core dual issue, around 300 to 350mhz. This will provide
+the confidence to go to higher geometries, as well as be a commercially
+viable embedded product in its own right.
+
+# Business Objectives
+
+See [[3d_gpu/business_objectives]]
+
+* the project shall be a hybrid CPU-GPU-VPU
+* the project shall be commercial and mass-volume (100 million units
+ and above)
+* the project shall be entirely transparent so that end-users will be
+ able to trust it
+* the source code shall be available at all times for all components
+ for BUSINESS reasons, making development and use of SDKs dead simple
+ and aiding and assisting developers AND BUSINESSES in debugging and thus
+ hugely saving them money.
+
+Reasoning:
+
+* If the processor is not a hybrid CPU-GPU-VPU, the
+ complexity involved in developing a split shared-memory CPU-GPU both
+ at a hardware and a software level will be so costly it will jeapordise
+ the project.
+* The project is commercial and mass-volume because there are plenty
+ of academic designs (none of them reaching production where people
+ may benefit), and "Open" designs, created by the Open Hardware
+ Community, sadly due to the high cost of producing ASICs, tend to be
+ focussed on markets that would have been great about twenty to thirty
+ years ago.
+* Transparency is a key business objective. It is a Unique Selling Point
+ that the processor is developed in a fashion that, should it be
+ independently audited, no opportunity for spying back-door co-processors
+ will be found to have "made their way surreptitiously - or overtly -
+ into the design". Yes, GCHQ: I know about the conversation you had
+ with nCipher (and, to their everlasting credit, that they told you
+ to take a hike)
+
+# Links: