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Who Makes Custom Chips?
toybuilder asks: "I have an idea for a neat consumer product that could benefit greatly from a really simple bare-die chip to reduce cost and size. I took a VLSI and chip design class back in college about 10 years ago, so I know how to design the circuit I want in CMOS. Now, I'm sure there must be fabs for older-generation designs (maybe in China/Taiwan) that I could have such a chip made -- I've seen bare chips in musical greeting cards and in tiny toy gadgets. How do I go about making my chip design into reality if I only want to make a fairly short run (a few *chips* during development, and maybe a 6" wafer's worth of the final design)?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA FPGA
I recall IBM has a program, where they will make your custom chip. This might have been something in the past, but I think they might still have it.
http://www-03.ibm.com/chips/asics/
SimonTek
To answer the question, you need to approach a semiconductor fab: TSMC, IBM, LSI, etc. I haven't done ASICs in a while, but those were the ones we dealt with most. That said, the parent poster is right, unless you want to do a purely analog design.
The only drawback to FPGAs is component cost, it will always be higher than a custom IC. On the other hand you can get them from anywhere from $1, to $500, depending on how big of an FPGA you need. The real advantage is that you can develop your idea, mostly for free, prototype it and then convert to a custom IC later when you get funding. It's a great way to go that many very well funded companies start with.
Building a custom IC has a very high NRE. It requires lots of expensive tools (Simulation, Synthesis, Verification, Floorplanning) and you almost certainly won't get it right on your first rev. Respins aren't free. If you want to do a fully analog design, it's even harder and I suggest you try to sell your idea to companies that specialize in this.
If you can develop and prove your idea in an FPGA, and put together a believable business case, you can probably get the funding you need. Otherwise, especially right now, it'd be very hard.
Design it using a HDL and you won't have to worry about who builds it. If you can find a way to raise the $1mil in NRE for an ASIC, you're ready to go. If you can't, then you can just use the smallest FPGA your design will fit in.
You want MOSIS. Providing small volume chip fab services (via short ganged-mask wafer runs at flexible mainstream fab houses) for decades now, Mosis is exactly what you want if FPGA and a programmable microcontroller aren't what you really need.
If you want to attempt it, MOSIS does small run fabrication by batching up small runs onto a single wafer and running them through commercial fabs like IBM and TSMC. The prices aren't out of reach.
However, you should remember from the VLSI class you've taken that it may take several runs before getting anything usable. Unless your design has some aspect that makes using a FPGA infeasible, you'd probably be better off with the FPGA. As I recall, a couple of FPGA vendors can also do conversions from FPGAs to hard-wired ASICs if you desire it later.
I used to work at SNF. Industry and small businesses were also allowed to use the lab. I has some very modern equipment but it is mainly for prototype. Once you have a working sample it then can be sent to a fab house for a production run if you get funding. It is not exactly cheap but a small project could be done w/o alot of investment. It all depends on how complicated your process is.
I have secretly hidden some mispelled words in this post. Can you find them?
At one time you could do a multi-project Mosis wafer. No masks are made,
p w_sched.html
the data is directly written to the wafer. Each project makes up 10 to 20 die on a large wafer. Flextronics was doing this for a while too, but I believe they have moved to a different business model. Check out the following link to IBM talking about their current Mosis schedule. I'm sure more info is there on the website.
http://www-03.ibm.com/chips/asics/foundry/tools/m
Good Luck
Honestly though, ASIC's are truly dead but for many applications, and especially consumer applications.
From your post, you seem to be underestimating the amount of effort required to correctly design an ASIC. Verification that your hardware design is correct is an extremely difficult task and the fab costs will mean that you won't often be able to revise your design based on tests of the real world device.
If you choose an FPGA, as others have mentionned, you'll be able to inexpensively implement your logic on the device at a very low cost (for mid-low volumes). In addition, since it is field-programmable, you can revise the design, issue bugfixes, and add features very easily in most cases. If your sales ever end up reaching high volume, you will likely be able to easily transition (mostly) to a custom die ASIC when it becomes economical for you to do that.
To give you an example, the company I work for spent millions of dollars to design a custom processing ASIC for some of our hardware. Our newer boards include a reconfigurable processing FPGA and were developped for a fraction of the cost.
on search query "fab your own chip", FWIW, I have NO idea about this ad, just found it. Spiffy domain name though
http://www.makeyourownchip.com/
Almost every reply seems to think that the only chips in existence are digital. If you are thinking of a digital design then, as the others said, FPGAs are the way to go - certainly for prototyping.
If you need an analogue device or want chip scale packaging of your device, then an asic would be more appropriate. It is possible that FPGAs are available in very small packages but I'm not very up on that.
If you're in Europe, the Europractice scheme provides access to Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) runs to reduce overall fabrication costs. They also provide the software and design kits that allow you to make your designs.
My price breakdown for a 10sqmm chip in the AMS C35B4 process (0.35um, 4 metal, 2 poly, high res) with 20 devices in CSOIC28 packages:
Full Europractice membership (annual): €900
Cadence IC package single license: €1800
Cadence IC package maintenance (might not be applicable for the first year): €1150
10sqmm of AMS C35B4 silicon @ €720/sqmm: €7200
20 packages @ €52/package: €1040
Total: €10,940 or €12,090
Non of the prices include any local taxes.
They also do low volume production, but I don't know anything about the pricing.
So how to bring that down? You could save €1800/€2950 on software by using free alternatives such as on this
page. You'd have no end of problems with design rules and layout vs. schematic verification but it would be possible. Normally I'd say allocate two months of hard graft at the very least using the normal tools and with support from someone who knows what they're doing. With inadequate tools (no design rule check/layout vs. schematic) you would have to at least double it and you still might have errors.Don't be influenced by your opinions of current design processes. We use a 0.35um process all the time. It's perfectly adequate for what we want to do - in fact in many ways it is better than smaller processes for us. You could save a lot of money by going to a coarser process such as the AMIS 0.7um (2 metal, 1 poly) at €360/sqmm or the AMIS 0.5um (3 metal, 1 poly) at €420/sqmm - both with a smaller minimum size at 8sqmm. Silicon cost would then be €2880 or €3360 compared to €7200. 8sqmm is quite a lot really.
Ultimately, you need to decide what you need. If you need analogue circuitry but don't need linear capacitors, go for the cheapest process. If you do need linear caps, you'll have to use a process with 2 poly layers. If you want digital as well, go for something finer and with more metal layers
Do you have any better hostages?
Wow, I didn't realize that my submission was getting accepted! Sorry for the late response.
MOSIS is exactly what I was trying to remember from my college days. I only had exposure to this back in college, so I didn't remember the prices being so high. Maybe it was subsidized a lot back when I was doing it for educational use...
What I have in mind is a chip that conmbines very simple finite state machines, some additional counters and logic gates on the digital side. Imagine a 8" x 8" breadboard full of 74-series DIPs, and you'd get the basic idea of the low complexity on the digital side.
On the analog side, I want to have some caps, opamps, and very beefy output drivers.
The whole thing is going to be "thumb sized", including the battery and the output device, so there's not a lot of room. And smaller the better -- so that's why I was thinking of bare dies.
It looks like I should first try to find a mixed-signal programmable device and hope that there is a chip-scale packaging.
I had dismissed ASIC because they seemed like overkill. A tiny uC might be okay in light of the high development costs of a chip.
Thanks guys. This has been great!