[SOLVED] fabricating my own integrated circuit?

[microntech]

In one of my lectures many years ago the professor mentioned that there was a collaboration between manufacturers which would allow you to buy space on part of a wafer for a small amount of money. I tried googling about this and couldn't find anything so here are my questions...

How would I go about fabricating my own integrated circuit? Which CAD tools would I want to use? How much does it cost to have a circuit fab'ed in limited quantities?

Thanks in advance for any information you can provide. I've seen a lot of discussions about making PCBs, but nothing about building ICs which seem to be the next logical step in the manufacturing process.

 

[andre_luis]

You tagged this topic as solved.
Could share what the solution you got ?



+++

 

[dick_freebird]

MOSIS is one mask aggregator. I believe there are others
but forget the name. Some semiconductor companies also
do this internally for multiple customers, you'd have to drill
in or find some recommendation, and it seems that their
enthusiasm for this sort of thing is cyclic / whimsical in
some cases.

Which foundry depends on what device attributes are
needed, and then you get to find out whether you have
multiproject access available or have to pay the full
freight. You won't want to do that unless your sales
volume opportunity is huge, or the product is very
valuable and your design, IP-protectable to prevent
somebody bigger and better equipped from me-tooing
you and eating your lunch.

Now, what you will get out of an operation like MOSIS
is interesting for academics and prototypers, but you
will not be able to go to market with that mask set. It
has too much of other peoples' stuff on it, you get
small quantities of dice and not wafers to do as you
please. So somewhere between proof of design and
production you still get to eat the cost of your own
mask set and wafer lots. But hopefully the proof will
enable you to dig up the money to go to the next
step.

https://www.mosis.com/products/fab-processes

 

[andre_luis]

At the time when I made at engineering the final graduation project related to course in microelectronics, was presented to students an agreement with a French university, where we could finance with our own account, the manufacturing of our designed circuit, shared on the same wafer toghether with other projects.

The concept was interesting, because it could allow us to do so at a lower cost than the regularly practiced, since it would be partly funded by the university. Unfortunately, once during school period we have no money for not nothing, I lost that opportunity to have my own IC.




+++

 

[Colbhaidh]

Almost all Foundries offer this to customers. They run about four times per year. They are usually called MPW runs (multi-project wafer runs) and must use th foudry's existing process offerings. These are not cheap !! Go into the foundry web site and search for MPW - you should find something.