#multi-project wafer

Note: i might be wrong about some of things here, i dont know much about ASIC design, but i think its interesting and wanted to share.

Apparently ordering PCB prototypes was not enough, nowadays one can even order prototype integrated circuits. I have heard of Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) before - where you purchase just a part of the overall wafer area during manufacturing, and the rest is sold to other people. This splits the cost of manufacturing between all the people involved. Once i checked some pricing on Europractice IC (https://europractice-ic.com/services/fabrication/) i found out that a minimal run is still in thousands of euros. It is probably aimed at institutions, such as universities and whatnot.

Recently i found out there's a project called Tiny Tapeout (which is Google-backed, i think?) which tries to cut costs even more. I think the way they do it is by squeezing multiple projects inside a single die instead of the whole wafer, but i am not that sure. They also provide a virtual machine with all the necessary tools installed, so learning the workflow also seems easy. There are already some videos on the tooling (i watched this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu_crbcBdNM, but its for analog ICs, not digital - digital would probably involve HDLs) and the tools seem to be open source which is great. I checked the pricing and a minimal run seems to be around 300 euro, except there was some discount involved, no idea why, which turned it to around 150. This is actually affordable for an individual i think. Also, recently they introduced analog ICs aswell, which have different tooling and workflow, more similar to PCB design.

Obviously, its still cheaper to prototype on FPGAs, but 1) i think FPGAs have worse performance than finished ICs and 2) eventually you might wanna see how your design performs in IC form.