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Hardware & Electronics

The most popular blog posts about hardware & electronics on Hacker News. 4,805 posts.

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1128

How AlphaChip transformed computer chip design

Our AI method has accelerated and optimized chip design, and its superhuman chip layouts are used in hardware around the world. AlphaChip was one of the first reinforcement learning approaches used to solve a real-world engineering problem. It generates superhuman or comparable chip layouts in hours, rather than weeks…

1130

Modifying an HDMI dummy plug's EDID using a Raspberry Pi

I recently found myself needing to change the monitor that a cheap HDMI “dummy plug” pretended to be. It was a random one I had bought on Amazon several years ago that acted as a 4K monitor, and I needed it to be something simpler that didn’t support a 4K resolution. The story behind why is a long one that I’m still…

1137

How to build a windmill

Windmills have always fascinated me and for a long time I was dreaming of one day building my own. Where I live there are still machines from the 1600’s that are just as magnificent today as when they were first built. When you see one standing in a field rotating and converting passing air into usable energy they…