Sophon PFG-1: a monolithic-3D AI ASIC with 330 GB of on-die DRAM and no HBM

codingpanic

I've been wondering how long before RAM is fabbed on die to get around supply issues. This is one of the first I've read of so far. How long before Apple releases a CPU with ram on die?

wmf

This design is absolutely wild. It probably won't work but I admire the dream.

addaon

Since when are we doing 32-layer planar transistor logic on a single chip? Even ignore the use of FETs for eDRAM… I didn’t realize we had decent logic density possible on BEOL.

brcmthrowaway

What is this? AI generated company?

vessenes

Minkowsky, cool design! Question - the ASIC designers I've worked with over the years have been fairly adamant that integrating memory on package interspersed with logic is very difficult; the general statements run like "those designs always look great on paper, but never tape out properly". Have you done any hardware tests of this plan? Is this still considered quality advice? Second q, why start with 28nm? Is the idea that you want to stick with TSMC and be able to shrink? If this does in fact work well, I can imagine wanting to shoot for a smaller process node pretty quickly. Is there some sort of tech / design gap you'll need to figure out as you go?

RobLach

MoS2 lattice construction?

throwaway89201

The entire design looks very interesting, but from the outside and without domain expertise I find it very hard to assess if anything about this is actually real or just a large and well-executed product of an AI psychosis. The signs that this project is real are hard to verify: - Angel investment by FinFET inventor Chenming Hu [1] seems a big vote of confidence, but there is no independent confirmation of this anywhere, except for two photo's in LinkedIn posts [2], which do look convincing. - The NanoGalaxy PPMOCVD was presented at IEDM 2025 [3][4], but nobody seems to have written about it except the company itself. In this case, presenting means a poster presentation with a very vibrantly colored marketing picture. - The NanoGalaxy PPMOCVD is built and in production, because you can "Witness a full 12-inch MoS₂ growth cycle on your own wafer lot" [5], but nobody has reported on this. A photo/video of the actual device would help a lot, but instead a very clean picture of what seems like a 3d-model is shown. There are a few worrying signs: - The submitter on HN presents itself as the founder. They have previously submitted other projects under the Phanta or PhantaField names [6]. Notably two hype cycle subjects: DAOs, NFTs and augmented reality, combined in a book that itself is rather 'out there' [7]. - The comments on HN by the founder are clearly AI generated with phrases like "honest caveat". The content seems to make sense (to a non-expert like me), but it's quite jarring. - All the work except the NanoGalaxy seems to be theoretical for now, but written in very definitive language in extreme detail. For example "The die is built" with specific properties but then referencing three very experimental papers. This can of course be genuine (technical) marketing, but it's also very similar to AI psychosis work that I've encountered elsewhere. Although I must say in comparison this does look a lot more internally consistent and logical to me. - I find it very hard to believe that the NanoGalaxy is actually existing and working hardware ready to "Witness a full 12-inch MoS₂ growth cycle on your own wafer lot". I would imagine you need a sizable team to produce such a new device, and that seems to be inconsistent with the way the company presents itself (a one man show of the founder). The absence of any verification or showcases of the device, or any evidence of a larger team make it suspect. [1] https://www.phantafield.com/news/first-angel-investment-chen... [2] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7126002... and https://www.linkedin.com/posts/xuejunxie_its-a-great-honor-t... [3] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7404253323... [4] https://www.phantafield.com/news/12-inch-ppmocvd-iedm-2025 [5] https://www.phantafield.com/product/ppmocvd [6] https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=minkowsky [7] https://xcancel.com/thepantheonai

freakynit

80B + INT4 + speculative (FP8 mode) => 72,188 tokens/s effective ..da fck!!