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I'd like to see the democratisation of chip fabrication. Imagine a world where a serious enthusast could fab say 32nm at home.
by TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
I'd like to see the democratisation of chip fabrication.
Imagine a world where a serious enthusast could fab say 32nm at home.
- bserge 5y agoAll it would take is for lithography equipment/chmicals/etc to start being sold to anyone at an affordable price... so, maybe in 50 years. On that note, you could technically just buy the chips and spend an inordinate amount of time and money building the PCB and firmware.
- webreac 5y agochips, pcb and mask (for the soldering pasta) are not so expensive. Soldering remains difficult and time consuming
- willis936 5y ago50 years is optimistic. The equipment needed for vacuum, plasma sputtering, and masking hasn't changed much in the past 50 years. Sure, if you want to make a 1 um process you can do that with a purchased wafer, some chemicals, and a spin plate. If you want to make a nm-scale process you'll need to have a serious budget.
- userbinator 5y agoYou already can get your own designs fabbed if you really want and can afford it (several k$): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-project_wafer_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-project_wafer_service
- sheer_audacity 5y agoThere are some great services out there for people who want their designs made at that level. Speaking as someone who has worked in fabs - there are so many ways it can go wrong and so many ways you could kill/poison/burn/electrocute yourself if you tried to do it yourself. Your lithography would probably need a lot of tweaking too!
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y agoYeah, I imagine it's take some kind of breakthrough technology vastly different to the current state of the art. If it were to happen I don't think it'd look like an at-home-version of the present industrial process.