A New Homemade Z2 Chip Came From the Mind of a 22-Year-Old Undergrad
[1]https://share.newsbreak.com/dffhozlk

"Sam Zeloof, a 22-year-old undergrad student has managed to build chips in his p
arents’ garage.
"Zeloof started his chip-making journey back in 2016 when he was a high school j
unior. He says that he was influenced by inventor and entrepreneur Jeri Ellswort
h's YouTube videos.
"After 10 years of tinkering with transistors, Zeloof decided to build his own c
hips and combine them with machines from the ‘70s. Zeloof is also the CEO of an
augmented-reality startup called [2]Tilt Five.
"Using salvaged and homemade equipment, Zeloof now built a new [3]chip with 1,20
0 transistors, Z2, in his family’s New Jersey garage, about 30 miles (48 km) fro
m where the first transistor was produced at Bell Labs in 1947.
"He documented the building process of Z2 on [4]his personal blog and his YouTub
e Channel.
(End of quote)
Jim Bell's comment:
Very interesting, but I think it would be much more useful if those chips were d
esigned by the individual, and then custom-fabbed on the same wafer with dozens
of other people's designs, to spread the cost.  This business model was done by
Orbit Semiconductor in the mid-1980's.
The bond-pad pattern would be identical so that probe-testing could be done with
 the same prober.

References

   1. https://share.newsbreak.com/dffhozlk
   2. http://www.tiltfive.com/
   3. http://sam.zeloof.xyz/category/semiconductor/
   4. http://sam.zeloof.xyz/second-ic/