Photolithography HomeFABs

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 11:01:29PM -0400, grarpamp wrote:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAPt_DcWAvw
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22718510
> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7E8-0Ou69hwScPW1_fQApA/videos
> http://sam.zeloof.xyz/first-ic/
> https://physicsworld.com/a/first-principles-calculations-shed-light-on-semiconductor-defects/
> 
> #OpenFAB
> 
> https://www.anandtech.com/show/15581/el-capitan-supercomputer-detailed-amd-cpus-gpus-2-exaflops


OK dude, you grapped my attention, then dumped a few links - that's really lean, bruh!  Dang fine subject line, dang few facts inline ;)


So how about give us some stats on what's possible today, more useful than your daily China virus death stats, say something like the following:

  140nm micro chip (pun not intended) fab:

    ~ $___,___
    devices A, B, C, D:

    A ~$__,___
    B ~$_,___
    C ~$___
    D ~$___,___
    etc

    Materials:

    X cm radius Y-grade silicon disc ~$M
    which can fit ~300 (say) micro-POWER cores with I/O, 16MiB cache and etc

    ... etc

    Performance ~ 0.5gflops integer, 0.01 gflops float

Now THAT might be inspirational... why -should- "men"s sheds be limited to lathes and CNC machines anyway?

And similar list for say 4, 5 or 6 layer motherboard manufacturing kit.

Rather than motherboards, could start with say PCI plugin board format, assisting development from existing PC tech...

Perhaps the UK based Arduino guys can answer the question - how much does it cost to set up a manuf. lab for Arduinos - anyone in contact with people at Arduino?

We need to answer certain questions too, such as at what "air/ external environment" purity is required at particular nm chip process (say 140nm); "when do we need the moon suits and a hermetically sealed (mega) factory - is that only when we get below 40nm, or is it "really anthing below 500nm"??


For those interested, the first link from the above youtube channel link is a cool start - homemade 5 micron (5000nm) "simple differential amplifier, containing 6 transistors on a 5 micron metal gate PMOS process - 5μm PMIS FET - circa early 1970s:

  Homemade Silicon ICs _ Computer Chips-XrEC2LGGXn0.mp4
  ~0:2:20
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrEC2LGGXn0