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Z2 – Lithographically fabricated IC in a garage fab

(sam.zeloof.xyz)
356 points embedding-shape | 1 comments | 07 Dec 25 03:03 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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unleaded ◴[07 Dec 25 13:28 UTC] No.46181532[source]▶
remember when JLCPCB became popular a few years ago and completely flipped hobby electronics upside down? I don't know how possible it is but it would be really cool if that happens in a few years with semiconductors. it's kind of mad that they've dominated our lives since the 1970s but you can only make them if you're a large company with millions of dollars (or several years, a big garage and lots of equipment as seen here). or tiny tapeout.
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mepian ◴[07 Dec 25 17:08 UTC] No.46183192[source]▶
It's not technologically feasible unless plastic aka flexible ICs take off.
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mitthrowaway2 ◴[07 Dec 25 18:01 UTC] No.46183618[source]▶
Why?

It seems to me that if there were as much of a customer base for custom ICs as there is for PCBs, a fabricator like TSMC could easily offer a batch prototyping service on a 28 nm node, where you buy just a small slice of a wafer, provided you keep to some restrictive design and packaging rules.

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1. shash ◴[07 Dec 25 18:43 UTC] No.46183962[source]▶
They already do offer that - it’s called a multi-project wafer or MPW. But it’s prohibitively expensive on a per-chip basis. It’s mostly used for prototyping or concept proving and not for commercial use.

One problem is, you need to create a photolithography mask set for any volume size of fabrication and those aren’t cheap. But that’s far from the _only_ problem with small volume.