[HN Gopher] Efabless - Shutdown Notice
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Efabless - Shutdown Notice
Author : KenoFischer
Score : 46 points
Date : 2025-03-01 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (efabless.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (efabless.com)
| fourier54 wrote:
| Totally expected. No business model at all. Miracle it worked for
| so many years.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| We really need a silicon foundry model again, somewhere somehow,
| where folks can get experienced deigning chips.
|
| America's such a technology hub because of our silicon foundry,
| because of MOSIS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSIS
|
| Carver Mead & Lynn Conway got countless students & interested
| parties out there, making chips. _Introduction to VLSI Design_
| was a book, but also a whole practice of getting out there and
| doing the thing for real. So so so much innovation & creativity
| followed.
|
| Efabless felt like such a great hope that the tradition could
| continue, that maybe perhaps we could have a new age of newcomers
| also starting to make chips.
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| RIP Lynn Conway. Huge loss to the industry. I hadn't realized
| she had passed until now.
| throwaway3572 wrote:
| It's still possible to get a chip made, via MPW, from SkyWater.
|
| And you can still use all the open source stuff, like the
| eFabless pad frame, if you want. But you'll have to work with
| SkyWater directly which does require various business
| agreements to be in place.
|
| See more here:
|
| https://www.skywatertechnology.com/technology-and-design-ena...
| 15155 wrote:
| > require various business agreements to be in place.
|
| I assume they require an NDA for their PDK? Or can projects
| still be meaningfully open-source with the existing one?
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| SkyWater's 130nm has been used for all (most?) of the
| Efabless x Google MPW (multi project wafer) runs. That PDK
| was open sourced as part of that initial effort.
|
| https://www.skywatertechnology.com/first-google-sponsored-
| mp...
|
| https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk
|
| There's a bunch of other PDKs running around now too. But
| progress does seem to have distinctly tapered off.
| kragen wrote:
| A bunch? I've only seen three--but that's still a huge
| improvement over zero pre-Skywater.
| bgnn wrote:
| Muse semi is an easier path. For Europe there is Europractice
| which gives access to pretty much any technology.
|
| The problem is access to software and fabs. EDA is expensive
| and nobody will give access to individuals. Same for fabs.
| They don't want to give access to a lot of people due to IP
| theft risks. Anyone can be a North Korean hacker. Plus they
| operate under US export controls which makes the paperwork
| daunting.
| throwaway_3133 wrote:
| This is what happens when you advertise a shuttle run for "open
| source" designs, brazenly backdoor everybody's chips with a
| Management Engine (google "eFabless Caravel") and then, to top it
| all off, act like you can just show up at CCC and pretend
| everything is fine:
|
| https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-the-design-decisions-behind-the-...
|
| Video from 38c3 talk 2024-Dec-29; question at time 31min:17sec.
|
| This company, and its enablers (formerly) at Google, set back the
| progress of open source chip design by at least three full years
| with this bait-and-switch insanity. The people who could see
| through the ruse wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole;
| meanwhile it sucked up all the students, momentum, and funding.
|
| Think about what three years of progress is worth in the tech
| industry.
| kragen wrote:
| How would you do a multi-project chip without something like a
| "management engine"? By the nature of semiconductor
| fabrication, you have a bunch of identical chips, but you want
| each contributor to the chip to be able to use it for testing
| their own contribution. It seems like that means you need some
| way to dynamically configure which of the many projects on the
| chip are actually connected to its I/O pins?
|
| To clarify, since unfortunately griefers are flagging your
| comment to impede the discussion, so I'm not allowed to reply
| to it: Tiny Tapeout is a multi-project chip, not a multi-
| project wafer (though it is one chip in a multi-project wafer).
| Typical minimum die sizes are 0.8mm2, which is about 2 million
| potential transistors in 130nm processes. That's big enough to
| put many projects on a chip. That's why Tiny Tapeout cost
| US$300 while MPW prices start at about US$3000 and more
| typically US$9999+.
| throwaway_3133 wrote:
| It's a multi-project _wafer_ not a multi-project _chip_.
|
| They cut the wafer apart into individual chips. There is
| _one_ project on each chip.
|
| This has been going on since the 1970s. It is a very well-
| understood process.
| throwaway_3133 wrote:
| All eFabless designs for the first two years of the program
| were multi-project _wafers_ with single-project _chips_.
| And they still required the management engine.
|
| Over the past year they tried an experimental "multi-
| project chip" (first samples shipped 14 months ago). But
| the management engine was a requirement _long_ before this
| happened.
|
| GP seems to have edited their comment, but I can't edit
| mine (even though it is only 8 minutes old)
| Etheryte wrote:
| Sidenote: On HN you can often get downvoted/flagged not only
| for what you say, but for the way you say it. I wouldn't
| really call it griefing, rather a call for more civil
| discussion. If an account is new or a throwaway it gets held
| to this standard even stronger because no one really wants to
| see a HN that's flooded by throwaway accounts writing Reddit
| style comments.
| echoangle wrote:
| Why do you need a management engine for that? Couldn't you
| just bond the connections to the ones you want and leave the
| other disconnected? Basically just have all chips next to
| each other on the die and only use one?
| danhor wrote:
| I/O pads (and their drivers) take up a huge amount of
| space. For some simpler ICs their die size is determined by
| their Pads.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| That was a front door not a back door! They were 100% open
| about the fact that it was there and most people wanted it to
| be there. If it didn't exist they would have to invent it. Why
| should I be the slightest bit upset about this?
| sgnelson wrote:
| That's a real shame.
|
| I haven't paid that much attention, but in my utopia, they would
| have received some funding from the CHIPS act just to act as a
| gateway for educating people on how to design and make chips. But
| we live here.
| kragen wrote:
| These were the Tiny Tapeout folks, right? Or am I confusing two
| different things? https://tinytapeout.com/ doesn't have any
| shutdown notices.
|
| Looks like yes: https://store.efabless.com/products/tiny-tapeout-
| project
|
| KenoFischer says no, Tiny Tapeout was using eFabless as their
| service provider and is looking into alternatives.
|
| Something's fishy. https://efabless.com/news doesn't list any
| shutdown notices.
| KenoFischer wrote:
| My understanding is that the TinyTapeout people were using
| efabless as a service provider and efabless was also providing
| some sponsorship, but that they are institutionally distinct.
| There's a LinkedIn post from the TinyTapeout folks that they're
| looking into alternatives.
| kragen wrote:
| That's a relief! And Tiny Tapeout has already done a beta
| with IHP's open-source 130nm BiCMOS SiGe PDK.
|
| The IHP PDK is really a lot more exciting to me than the
| Skywater stuff because it's aimed at submillimeter analog
| things (450GHz f[?], 650GHz fastest oscillator) and why would
| you fab a digital design in 130nm instead of just programming
| an FPGA?
| bgnn wrote:
| IHP is excitinybut their PDK is horrible compared to major
| fabs like TSMC or GF. Anyone using it for products hate it.
| kiwih wrote:
| I am devastated by this news. I was lucky enough to work with
| Mohamed and Andy for several projects (including taping out the
| world's first ChatGPT-authored silicon [0]), and I've never met
| people more passionate about making chip design and silicon tape-
| out accessible to all. This is a real loss for the academic and
| maker communities.
|
| [0] https://cyber.nyu.edu/2024/07/22/chipchat-nyu-tandon-team-
| fa...
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