Well, it's certainly an interesting concept that a person can make chips "in
his own garage", etc.
I did my own share of circuit design, mostly in the 1970's, designing and
fabricating PC boards (That's "printed circuit", not "personal computer", and
certainly not "politically-correct"!!!) I designed and built a
constant-temperature-bath with zero-crossing power controller (a task which
would have been made trivial with the SSR's (solid-state relays, see Crydom)
that eventually became commonplace), a 4-digit frequency counter, a 4 1/2 digit
DVM, and my should-have-been-famous "Bellyache I" computer (a play on the name
of the Illiac IV computer), with a maximum of about 600 IC's, mostly
wire-wrapped. The latter eventually drove a 6 Mhz Z-80 at 12.5 MHz, a very
early example of over-clocking. I also cooled the Z-80 with a thermoelectric
device, that I had bought a few years earlier from a surplus company called
"B+F Electronics" in Massachusetts. Yet another idea that eventually went
bigtime, along with my invention of the disk emulator ("solid-state disk"), the
"SemiDisk" in August 1980.
However, what I find more useful would be the idea (very old, I realize) that a
person or company can design the chips, and then have them fabbed in a
custom-wafer facility. For some reason, the company "Orbit Semiconductor"
comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_Semiconductor
A person could readily do circuit design, presumably today using pre-designed
building-blocks, finalize the chip design in software including simulation, and
have them fabbed (along with the designs of many other people) on the same
wafer, probably with the same pad-layout to enable custom-testing at the fab.
But instead of every chip being identical, each chip design would be repeated a
few times over the wafer. People could go from having a small number of
wafer-spots, or many, depending on how big their order was.
Modern tools (circuit design; layout; simulation; test) should make this
process far simpler than it would have been in, say, 1985.
I think Orbit Semiconductor did this in 1985, making possible the idea of a
"fabless" chip company.
Jim Bell
On Sunday, August 11, 2019, 01:28:08 AM PDT, grarpamp <[email protected]>
wrote:
http://sam.zeloof.xyz/category/semiconductor/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20657398
I am very excited to announce the details of my first integrated
circuit and share the journey that this project has taken me on over
the past year. I hope that my success will inspire others and help
start a revolution in home chip fabrication. When I set out on this
project I had no idea of what I had gotten myself into, but in the end
I learned more than I ever thought I would about physics, chemistry,
optics, electronics, and so many other fields. Furthermore, my efforts
have only been matched with the most positive feedback and support
from the world; I owe a sincere thanks to everyone who has helped me,
given me advice, and inspired me on this project. Especially my
amazing parents, who not only support and encourage me in any way they
can but also give me a space to work in and put up with the
electricity costs… Thank you!
Without further ado, I present the first home (garage) made
lithographically-fabricated integrated circuit – the “Z1” PMOS dual
differential amplifier chip. I say “lithographically-fabricated”
because Jeri Ellsworth made the first transistors and logic gates
(meticulously hand wired with conductive epoxy) and showed the world
that this is possible. Inspired by her work, I have demonstrated ICs
made by a scalable, industry-standard, photolithographic process.
Needless to say, this is the logical step-up from my previous
replication of Jeri’s FET fabrication work.
