5 ms·

Those tens of billions of dollars investments baffle me. I'm relatively well-versed in technologies involved as well as their r&d efforts, I understand construc

Those tens of billions of dollars investments baffle me. I'm relatively well-versed in technologies involved as well as their r&d efforts, I understand construction parameters for fabs.. but I still can't understand how can setting up a production process cost such an extraordinary amount of cash. Also makes me think are chips (any smaller transistor scale, for arbitrary amount of small) out of reach for DIY fabrications and smaller startups? edit: I did stumble upon few youtubers doing their own chips with vacuum plasma chambers and DIY lithography and whatnots. It strikes me odd that there aren't more of 'hack' attempts at DIY chips. FPGAs and software is all fine and dandy, but this really seems like a fun and great challenge.

brandonism 10y ago
My old university had a fairly large cleanroom and start ups would rent space/tools. Most of the equipment was very old, so limited to 100mm or 150mm wafers and sub micron feature would be difficult.
tonyarkles 10y ago
I'm not an IC designer, but from what I understand MOSIS (https://www.mosis.com/what-is-mosis https://www.mosis.com/what-is-mosis) is reasonably priced, for some definition of "reasonable". You don't get to use the latest technologies/feature sizes, but you do get to do small volume prototype runs for somewhere in the neighbourhood of $10,000. Looking around a bit to verify the pricing landed me at: http://www.cmc.ca/en/WhatWeOffer/Make/FabPricing.aspx http://www.cmc.ca/en/WhatWeOffer/Make/FabPricing.aspx. Those prices are likely subsidized from somewhere, but they bring things into the "totally approachable" realm. Here in Canada, if you were going to do an IC fabrication startup, it'd probably make a lot of sense to go through NSERC anyway; they have a lot of programs where you can get a significant portion of your employment and R&D costs covered. Edit: Looks like TSMC will also do things like this directly, but without specifying prices: http://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/services/cyberShuttle.htm http://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/services/cyberS...
- vvanders 10y ago
  Yeah, they were talking about this on the Amp Hour a few episodes ago. There's some universities that actually fab a physical chip as part of their coursework using MOSIS. If I remember correctly there was an edu discount. Very cool stuff.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    It can get really cheap for small circuits on 350nm, etc. Also, Europeans have something similar with Europractice: http://www.europractice-ic.com/ http://www.europractice-ic.com/
avs733 10y ago
the equipment...when you spend 50million or so on a litho scanner and the associated track, plumb in the chemicals, the support equipment for the chemicals, etc. it adds up fast. Remember they aren't setting up one line they are setting up many because the economics only work at scale. If I need to do 40+ litho layers with 60k wsw you need probably a dozen or more litho tool sets. That alone is over a billion dollars.
- goda90 10y ago
  After all the advances that are on the way with ICs(5nm, 3D chips, different semiconductors) I wonder if cheap, small batch production that can be done by hobbyists and small businesses will ever be a thing.
- Keyframe 10y ago
  You're right. That's what I haven't considered! Something like an offset printing press. You can do all four (or more) layers with only one machine/press, but most machines have 4 layers/presses inside them in order to expedite production.
  - avs733 10y ago
    If you forgive the shameless self-promotion, I did a talk on the scale and economics and so forth a while back you might find interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4 It has been posted on HN a few times before...the technology still puts a tingle in my spine [insert critcism of how I need to be a better public speaker here]
    - Keyframe 10y ago
      By the powers bestowed upon me by hacker news user account creation, I absolve you from your sin of shameless self-promotion. Seriously though, I am as remote as possible from that industry (film and TV content creation!), but it absolutely fascinates me. I devour all and every article and paper (that I can understand) about this and HPC as well. You did well in video, we should do a documentary together on this theme!
pjc50 10y ago
The top two answers here: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/67598/how-are-integrated-circuits-fabricated/ http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/67598/how-are... are a good summary of why there isn't a useful DIY effort for actual manufacture in your basement. The process for designing and producing chips is extremely waterfall, requiring various specialist skills and software that aren't particularly cheap. It's not impossible for smaller startups - I've actually been a consultant as part of a team for an outsourced mixed-signal chip design, under half a million dollars. The problem is that now you've made hardware, with all the woes of a hardware startup, with the addition that you don't make any money until people incorporate your product into their product. It requires deep pockets and you're vulnerable to either straight cloning or existing companies pushing out competing products, while it doesn't really have the same unicorn potential upside. There's plenty of failed processor startups around if you look, but only really one successful one: ARM.
- happycube 10y ago
  And even ARM was a special case - it was created on a shoestring budget by a few clever engineers at Acorn and marketed outside w/VLSI later. It's an interesting story :) (Acorn's 'exit strategy' in the late 90's was also interesting - they shut down the computer division, focused on DSL chip designs, and got bought by Broadcom a couple of years later for $1xx million...)
happycube 10y ago
Getting to smaller feature sizes is pretty much an exponential curve. Jeri Ellsworth made transistors at home once, and I suspect very early IC's could be done in a garage... if you can deal with the chemicals ;)
nickpsecurity 10y ago
Capital investment. Each iteration pushes the cutting edge requiring millions to billions in R&D with enough Ph.D.'s and new findings textbooks have to be rewritten regularly to show what was impossible a few years ago is now a fielded procedure. That accounts for high costs to start with. Next problem is each iteration into deep, submicron processes uses smaller tooling fighting more physics and noise with ever more sensitive instruments. Figuring out each issue requires lots of expensive tooling and experiments. Those vendors gotta make their money back. So, each tool in semiconductor process can cost millions to tens of millions of dollars. Each are custom built. The fab has to buy dozens to hundreds of these plus recover their investment with profit. They do it in wafers sold mainly. So, given each market converges on a few players, it's easy to see that only a few players will have the volume to sustain the investments into new tech. On top of it, the nodes seem to double in cost ever so many steps trimming off even more competition. It got down to the lowest nodes that make high-end CPU's and mobile SOC's having only five or six companies fabbing them. Still plenty of work, esp for analog/RF, at higher nodes like 180-350nm. Yet, even an older fab might have to do $10-50mil a month in business just to keep their doors open. Needless to say, people aren't going to do deep-submicron in their garages any time soon. Most companies with deep pockets gave up on fabs, too. Even IBM is selling theirs IIRC. So, most use a "fabless" model where they design hardware then send files that remaining fabs turn into hardware. There's a few companies that keep their own fabs on mostly obsolete nodes that are still useful to them. Yet, almost everyone else is fabless.
- kragen 10y ago
  I know a guy doing deep submicron in, essentially, his garage; but he's doing it with direct FIB, not photolithography or even FIB lithography.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Yeah, you can do that. Shifts the risk to the expensive, black boxes made in pro-espionage countries. ;) Plus, your volume is really, really low. When Im home, I'll give you link to a defunct fab in Europe that did theirs that way. Might be worth copying for some sectors.

brandonism 10y ago

My old university had a fairly large cleanroom and start ups would rent space/tools. Most of the equipment was very old, so limited to 100mm or 150mm wafers and sub micron feature would be difficult.

tonyarkles 10y ago

I'm not an IC designer, but from what I understand MOSIS (https://www.mosis.com/what-is-mosis https://www.mosis.com/what-is-mosis) is reasonably priced, for some definition of "reasonable". You don't get to use the latest technologies/feature sizes, but you do get to do small volume prototype runs for somewhere in the neighbourhood of $10,000. Looking around a bit to verify the pricing landed me at: http://www.cmc.ca/en/WhatWeOffer/Make/FabPricing.aspx http://www.cmc.ca/en/WhatWeOffer/Make/FabPricing.aspx. Those prices are likely subsidized from somewhere, but they bring things into the "totally approachable" realm. Here in Canada, if you were going to do an IC fabrication startup, it'd probably make a lot of sense to go through NSERC anyway; they have a lot of programs where you can get a significant portion of your employment and R&D costs covered. Edit: Looks like TSMC will also do things like this directly, but without specifying prices: http://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/services/cyberShuttle.htm http://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/services/cyberS...

vvanders 10y ago
Yeah, they were talking about this on the Amp Hour a few episodes ago. There's some universities that actually fab a physical chip as part of their coursework using MOSIS. If I remember correctly there was an edu discount. Very cool stuff.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  It can get really cheap for small circuits on 350nm, etc. Also, Europeans have something similar with Europractice: http://www.europractice-ic.com/ http://www.europractice-ic.com/

avs733 10y ago

the equipment...when you spend 50million or so on a litho scanner and the associated track, plumb in the chemicals, the support equipment for the chemicals, etc. it adds up fast. Remember they aren't setting up one line they are setting up many because the economics only work at scale. If I need to do 40+ litho layers with 60k wsw you need probably a dozen or more litho tool sets. That alone is over a billion dollars.

goda90 10y ago
After all the advances that are on the way with ICs(5nm, 3D chips, different semiconductors) I wonder if cheap, small batch production that can be done by hobbyists and small businesses will ever be a thing.
Keyframe 10y ago
You're right. That's what I haven't considered! Something like an offset printing press. You can do all four (or more) layers with only one machine/press, but most machines have 4 layers/presses inside them in order to expedite production.
- avs733 10y ago
  If you forgive the shameless self-promotion, I did a talk on the scale and economics and so forth a while back you might find interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4 It has been posted on HN a few times before...the technology still puts a tingle in my spine [insert critcism of how I need to be a better public speaker here]
  - Keyframe 10y ago
    By the powers bestowed upon me by hacker news user account creation, I absolve you from your sin of shameless self-promotion. Seriously though, I am as remote as possible from that industry (film and TV content creation!), but it absolutely fascinates me. I devour all and every article and paper (that I can understand) about this and HPC as well. You did well in video, we should do a documentary together on this theme!

pjc50 10y ago

The top two answers here: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/67598/how-are-integrated-circuits-fabricated/ http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/67598/how-are... are a good summary of why there isn't a useful DIY effort for actual manufacture in your basement. The process for designing and producing chips is extremely waterfall, requiring various specialist skills and software that aren't particularly cheap. It's not impossible for smaller startups - I've actually been a consultant as part of a team for an outsourced mixed-signal chip design, under half a million dollars. The problem is that now you've made hardware, with all the woes of a hardware startup, with the addition that you don't make any money until people incorporate your product into their product. It requires deep pockets and you're vulnerable to either straight cloning or existing companies pushing out competing products, while it doesn't really have the same unicorn potential upside. There's plenty of failed processor startups around if you look, but only really one successful one: ARM.

happycube 10y ago
And even ARM was a special case - it was created on a shoestring budget by a few clever engineers at Acorn and marketed outside w/VLSI later. It's an interesting story :) (Acorn's 'exit strategy' in the late 90's was also interesting - they shut down the computer division, focused on DSL chip designs, and got bought by Broadcom a couple of years later for $1xx million...)

happycube 10y ago

Getting to smaller feature sizes is pretty much an exponential curve. Jeri Ellsworth made transistors at home once, and I suspect very early IC's could be done in a garage... if you can deal with the chemicals ;)

nickpsecurity 10y ago

Capital investment. Each iteration pushes the cutting edge requiring millions to billions in R&D with enough Ph.D.'s and new findings textbooks have to be rewritten regularly to show what was impossible a few years ago is now a fielded procedure. That accounts for high costs to start with. Next problem is each iteration into deep, submicron processes uses smaller tooling fighting more physics and noise with ever more sensitive instruments. Figuring out each issue requires lots of expensive tooling and experiments. Those vendors gotta make their money back. So, each tool in semiconductor process can cost millions to tens of millions of dollars. Each are custom built. The fab has to buy dozens to hundreds of these plus recover their investment with profit. They do it in wafers sold mainly. So, given each market converges on a few players, it's easy to see that only a few players will have the volume to sustain the investments into new tech. On top of it, the nodes seem to double in cost ever so many steps trimming off even more competition. It got down to the lowest nodes that make high-end CPU's and mobile SOC's having only five or six companies fabbing them. Still plenty of work, esp for analog/RF, at higher nodes like 180-350nm. Yet, even an older fab might have to do $10-50mil a month in business just to keep their doors open. Needless to say, people aren't going to do deep-submicron in their garages any time soon. Most companies with deep pockets gave up on fabs, too. Even IBM is selling theirs IIRC. So, most use a "fabless" model where they design hardware then send files that remaining fabs turn into hardware. There's a few companies that keep their own fabs on mostly obsolete nodes that are still useful to them. Yet, almost everyone else is fabless.

kragen 10y ago
I know a guy doing deep submicron in, essentially, his garage; but he's doing it with direct FIB, not photolithography or even FIB lithography.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Yeah, you can do that. Shifts the risk to the expensive, black boxes made in pro-espionage countries. ;) Plus, your volume is really, really low. When Im home, I'll give you link to a defunct fab in Europe that did theirs that way. Might be worth copying for some sectors.