A New Homemade Z2 Chip Came From the Mind of a 22-Year-Old Undergrad https://share.newsbreak.com/dffhozlk
"Sam Zeloof, a 22-year-old undergrad student has managed to build chips in his parents’ garage. "Zeloof started his chip-making journey back in 2016 when he was a high school junior. He says that he was influenced by inventor and entrepreneur Jeri Ellsworth's YouTube videos. "After 10 years of tinkering with transistors, Zeloof decided to build his own chips and combine them with machines from the ‘70s. Zeloof is also the CEO of an augmented-reality startup called Tilt Five. "Using salvaged and homemade equipment, Zeloof now built a new chip with 1,200 transistors, Z2, in his family’s New Jersey garage, about 30 miles (48 km) from where the first transistor was produced at Bell Labs in 1947. "He documented the building process of Z2 on his personal blog and his YouTube Channel. (End of quote) Jim Bell's comment: Very interesting, but I think it would be much more useful if those chips were designed 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.
