Think back to the 2021-2022 pandemic-triggered supply chain chaos, when the media widely reported that car companies, for example, were all having very painful experiences with parking lots full of $50k trucks they couldn't sell due to a lack of $5 chips.

At the time I saw some of Sam's videos (I think I originally found them here on HN), and I had a big question: If a hobbyist can build 1970's era chips for ~$10k in his garage, and Intel can build 2020's era chips for ~$10B in state-of-the-art factories, why doesn't someone start a startup building 1990's era chips in a ~$10M facility?

I'd assume Atomic Semi is that startup :)

Semi is the next big thing in distributed manufacturing you already have companies that offer what is essentially ride sharing for semiconductors they manufacture single IC/SoC with multiple blocks on them and you essentially pay for a % of the floor plan which can operate independently from the rest.

So whilst not quite garage ready we’re probably 2-5 years of you being able to order completely custom silicon form the likes of PCBway and have it shipped in the matter of days rather than months.

Some past discussion suggested there was an opportunity for very low volume production at much lower cost because the method doesn't use masks.

They're being very cagy, but it's quite likely they're working on "fast" maskless technology. Basically going from FPGA to chip in low enough volumes that maskless makes sense. It'd be a small, but lucrative, niche if they can get a good system at a decent node size.

My take was that a low and slow approach that did not involve the traditional dangerous chemicals was being developed. Currently TSMC etc processes require hydrofluoric acid and other things that can kill you.