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Google will make your own chips for free
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RoGeorge:
https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/free-chips-2020-07/


or, if you don't have time for a 95 minutes video, here are the slides only.

 :-+
jmelson:
Hmmm, we have had chips made through MOSIS and now Europractice, in a shared-project wafer mode.  NOT at all cheap, a 5 x 7 mm chip in a relatively modest technology runs about US $40K without packaging, for a very short run of, say, 160 die.  While I can see some subsidized projects that are interesting to the provider of the subsidy, no WAY will they fabricate any and all projects for free.

Jon
mian2zi3:
I watched the video.  They are aiming to do a multi-project wafer with 40 projects every 3 months.  If they get more than 40 projects, they decide on a selection criteria (he mentioned lottery as one option).  Projects get 10mm^2 of silicon and deliver ~100 chips (packaged).
Bud:
An obvious question: what is in it for Google? Are they looking to gain experience in IC manufacturing? Are they looking to create a market place and be in control that manufacturing? Are they looking to scrape information on what is of interest to engineers? Else?
RoGeorge:
They are working on an open source EDA tools for chips design.  It is almost ready and they need to test it, and they'll also need to build a user base familiar with the new tools.

They can run test and then debug the chips by themselves, or they can do what they are doing now, where everybody benefits.  They told in the video to consider your project as open source and disposable, so it might or it might not work, but I think it is still a very good deal for the beta testers.
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