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Comment by kken | Hacker News Reader

Semiconductor manufacturing thrives on econmy of scale. It would be very appealing to disrupt that field by enabling cost effective manufacturing of smaller volumes as well. This is especially true for customized technologies and devices.

There is a very interesting initiative in Japan: https://www.minimalfab.com

I wonder whether this is similar to what Sam Zeloof has in mind? I went through the website, job postings, twitter threads etc. but I am not sure what they are actually trying to do.

There used to be a crazy startup with a simiilar business approach in mind that tried to manufacture devices in small spheres of silicon: ballsemi. Their website seems to be defunct, but there is an article here:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/838482

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In particular it would be interesting if they can make their manufacturing more accessible. Want to fab a chip on TSMC? You'll either need to find another company to contract/partner with who has an existing relationship with TSMC and can do all the back-end implementation work for you or setup such a relationship yourself, including onerous NDAs so you can get PDK access (that's assuming you can manage to get a conversation going with them in the first place).

It'd be fabulous if atomic went the Open PDK route like Skywater 130nm: https://skywater-pdk.readthedocs.io/en/main/ but even a setup with a 'here's the fab price list click here to pay us $x'000k and sign our NDA to get access' would be a big step forward. Combined with reduced manufacturing costs it would make it far easier for smaller players to experiment with custom silicon.

>t'd be fabulous if atomic went the Open PDK route like Skywater 130nm: https://skywater-pdk.readthedocs.io/en/main/ but even a setup with a 'here's the fab price list click here to pay us $x'000k and sign our NDA to get access' would be a big step forward. Combined with reduced manufacturing costs it would make it far easier for smaller players to experiment with custom silicon.

Yeah, but the business model of providing accessible standard CMOS technology would not really require building new tools, wouldn't it? I think the appeal would be in being able to build devices in highly customized technology.This would require fast learning cycles at low cost. Not really something a MPW helps with.

Well if your view is the barriers to entry to standard CMOS technology are far too high and it's possible to do things more cheaply and openly, (e.g. using cheap equipment source from China as per Zeloof: https://mobile.twitter.com/szeloof/status/154993704406717235...) then you might conclude some custom tooling to be a key part of the puzzle to help tie everything together you can get off the shelf (or in-time replace off the shelf tooling to get a neater solution).

I mention skywater 130nm not because of the MPW program but because it's an open PDK, you can just download it and go use it, without needing to pay anything or sign any legal agreements. Maybe Atomic would go the same way?

Found more presentations on the minimal fab:

https://www.industrie-techno.com/mediatheque/6/4/7/000004746...

Slide 17 is a comparison of the concept to a large fab.

Very pro-Trump presentation! (Read the slides you’ll get the joke.)

Indeed, but I think they oppose the MAGA fab ;)

what happened to ballsemi?

Looks like the closed down. I have not been able to find any news though.

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