Re:Second IC
by picture on Friday August 13, 2021 @09:12PM
(#28176836)
I was thinking about something like that too. How hard would it be to have a semiconductor-manufacturing-as-a-service with lower inertia like those PCB manufacturing services? The hobbyist affordable board houses these days generally have extremely good processes and quality that even beat some "industrial" board houses, as they're thoroughly refined by fabricating hobbyist boards with sometimes really awful DFM considerations
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Re:Second IC
by 0xcde4c3db on Friday August 13, 2021 @11:26PM
(#28177576)
There are companies working on scaling e-beam lithography, which might be along the lines you're looking for [1] [2]
Re:Second IC
by colechristensen on Friday August 13, 2021 @11:12PM
(#28177503)
You have to find the capability / price point sweet spot and you could probably create a big market, that kind of thing has been happening more and more lately... but it takes a lot of domain knowledge and luck.
A good example of this is how Arduino broke open the hobbyist electronics market which went from circuit programmers and prototype boards that would run in hundreds of dollars on the low end to $20 or something to get in at the ground level.
Given the relative affordability of Skywater's service nowadays, I imagine we will eventually see custom silicon projects on Kickstarter and the like.
Masks are expensive
Which is probably why Sam's process uses a DLP projector install of masks.
A mask at this scale would just be a few hundred dollars I think (chrome on glass)?