I am not worried about getting sick myself, or my son, but am a little worried if my wife would get it.

But for the most part, it's sortof like I am not afraid to drive in the snow, but I am afraid of the idiots that don't know how to bu tare out there skidding around in the roads anyway. I'm more concerned about society losing its head than I am about getting sick.

I usually work from home already, and we homeschool our kid, so business as usual...

I stand in a store, wonder what Thing X is like, look up reviews on popular online site...

Wow, that Thing sucks, I'm not going to buy it...

or

Great, this Thing does not suck, and is comparably priced, so I'll get it right now at this store I'm standing inside of with Thing on the shelf in front of me. No need to order...

I think this is the most important detail. When thunderbolt was new, I inquired about including a connector on an embedded system, not using an intel CPU or chipset. Not even an answer from them, so it was a void and useless technology to me. Becoming an open standard, usable on non-Intel platforms (Arm, RiscV etc as well as AMD), as USB can, is what will begin to make Thunderbolt at all relevant. And I have only had Intel based laptops or desktops for work or home for several years, but I do not have a single Thunderbolt widget for any of them.

He credits Jeri for inspiring his work to build a fab at home.

https://hackaday.com/2017/02/2...

First, what are basics, fpgas and gpgpus?

A gpgpu is an asic. The designer wants to make a GPU, which can also be used for general purpose computer tasks. The designer chooses how many shades to include, and how they are architected, and how it is all controlled. The designer puts registers where it makes sense to, to optimize this architecture.

A CPU is similar, also an asic, and the designer figures out how to most optimally (in his opinion) to implement the instruction set, what a core looks like and how it works, alu design, and puts registers where it makes the most sense to do so.

An fpga is also an asic. The application specific to an fpga chip is to be a reconfigurable logic chip. The designer 1 makes up an architecture to implement the design that is an fpga and implements that into silicon, and then the fpga user (designer 2) puts his particular design configuration into that now programmable asic chip that designer 1 called an fpga. So there are two levels of design for fpga. I myself have been a designer1 in this case.

Now, as above, an asic can be pretty much anything. A chip designer sees the word "register" in a somewhat different context than a software person who wants to put a value in a particular address. A chip designer considers a flip flop to be a register. Something that holds its value between clock edges, and changes value at a clock edge. Most of these are probably not even seen or observable by software people. Some become CPU register file registers, thr vast majority probably are not. There are hundreds dreds of millions, or billions of transistors on CPU and GPU chips today, but how many software register addresses are there???
ANYWAY... So the CPU designer optimized his logic to be an x64 or an arm processor, and the GPU designer optimized his logic to be a gpu chip with gp capability, and the fpga designer1 optimized his logic to become programmable or reconfigurable logic, which someone else then makes some unpredictable use for.
By definition, an fpga has a lot of overhead to be programmable, and designer1 can make it be a giant expensive and gate. Even optimally, there is a lot of multiplexes and wiring to make an and gate. A direct asic design would drop an and gate directly between the input pad circuit and the output pad circuit. The fpga is complicated, and that makes it less efficient than a direct asic. Anything an fpga can do, a hardwired, optimal asic design can do faster and with less power usage.
Now, a CPU can do a lot of things, but is not optimal for the particular algorithm in question.
A GPU can do a lot of things, and can do a lot of things much faster than a cpu, but the gpu may still not be optimal for the algorithm in question.
An fpga can do any digital circuit that fits, and your clock rate is whatever that best runs at without violating timing constraints. You can optimize a digital logic design to be the best digital design for the algorithm in question, forget the software control, and just have an appropriately designed pipeline for data to pass through, inputs at one end and outputs at the other end, whatever registers in the middle that make sense as "variables" storage locations between the algorithmic combinations logic steps, but likely never to be seen by software at all. But fpga has lots of overhead.
Finally, take your optimal and tested fpga design and convert it to a hardwired asic design, shave off the programmable overhead, and build on the fastest fab process you can afford. (Can you afford a 7nm mask set and capable asic design tools?? Not many can...)
An optimal digital design exactly for this one algorithm purpose, and no other, will be the fastest thing possible to make. Depending on your finances, you may not be able to afford the fastest possible, but can likely still beat an fpga or gpgpu or CPU in performance and power. If you are financially poor, then start with what you can afford...

Now, how can you simulate... First, spend a lot of time optimizing the digital circuit. Consider what you want clock rate to be, and how that affects how deep the combinational logic between registers can be to meet timing constraints. Run that design through synthesis and place and route steps to see how your timing looks. This isn't even a verilog simulator, this is just timing to make sure it will function as expected at speed. Verilog simulation is for functional testing, not for speed testing... you do also want to do functional simulation to make sure it actually does the algorithm that you think it does, and does everything correctly. But that does not understand the clock speed being a friend or a foe to correct functionality. Your timing analysis tool does that.
Look up the VSD set of courses on udemy by Kunal Ghosh (sp??) For some good intro to the world of chip design, mostly digital from what I have seen. (The real world remains analog, and there remains a lot of analog chip design as well, but not as relevant to this question)

I wish I was in a financial position to consider something like the Note 10 to be a cheap piece of throwaway garbage.

Who did we let be our president? ...

Well, there's enough market that a few other vendors are already selling several different C64 systems.

C64DTV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

C-One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Ultimate 64: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

C64 reloaded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

TheC64 Mini: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

They got alot of flack about TheC64 Mini not having a functional keyboard. Now they are making that functional keyboard version, so there must be demand for it, or there would not be this sixth, at least, C64 product being introduced in the 2010's.

Cern is the current maintainer (and have been for a few years now) of KiCAD, an open-source PCB design tool.
http://kicad-pcb.org/about/kic...

https://home.cern/science/comp...
https://kt.cern/open
and so on...

They are even into open-source hardware.
https://ohwr.org/cernohl

Libraries are more than just a place to get free books.

Libraries have a lot of activities for kids. Small-scale showmen do magic shows, puppet plays, play music, our library has a Minecraft club to discuss creation ideas, methods, mod programming, and a lot of other things.

Our library has a section where students of various ages meet with their tutors.

Some of our nearby libraries have a decent (somewhat expensive, better than the cheapest things) 3d printer, and my son is very interested in learning about that. I like the idea of him learning on that, to see how far such interest goes, before investing in purchasing a machine for home. (and figuring out where to put one and supplies at home vs how often would it be used)

Our library has book clubs and other activities for adults as well.

Can Amazon replace all of that? No. Can Starbucks? Uh, have you ever seen magic shows or plays at a Starbucks? I havent...

I go there to work sometimes (anywhere I have WiFi internet and cellphone signal...) as it's generally quiet, and nearby to activities my son is doing for a while.

Sorry, but I only see benefits to our libraries, and do nto want to see them taken away for the benefit of Amazon and other establishments tha tdo not adequately replace the libraries.

I'm not interested in the Arduino silliness. But in a way it is how Arduinos work. I used to work as a chip designer at the "Arduino chip" vendor, and have an understanding of how that "Arduino chip" itself was made... One of these HDL languages was involved...

Essentially, yes. Digital circuit design is largely done using VHDL or Verilog (or derivatives) "hardware design language" code. Type the functionality, type the netlist connecting it together and to analog blocks like clock PLLs, voltage regulators, PowerOnResets, IO pad buffers, etc. EDA tools synthesize the code into logic gates and wire them together. Build IP libraries for reuse so you don't have to code the same thing again, buy it from vendors, find it as open-source (opencores.org) etc...

Is a host controller chip available yet for testing any driver code with the USB3.2 framework?

Uh, maybe that isn't good news...