Jim Keller's startup is building a factory to mass-produce small chip fabs(www.tomshardware.com)
48 pointsby logickkk12 hours ago8 comments
  • ipsum22 minutes ago
    I don't get it. How is Jim Keller running a brand new, hard tech startup while being CEO of Tenstorrent at the same time?
  • WithinReasonan hour ago
    That's the one that Sam Zeloof is working on, "having lithographically microfabricated various chips in his garage as early as the age of 17"

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Zeloof

    • embedding-shape11 minutes ago
      Featured on the frontpage four years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30043719 (22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage | 525 | Jan 23, 2022 | 347 comments)

      I still recall being amazed reading and seeing it for the first time, and I have been eagerly awaiting to see what he been up to since starting Atomic Semi.

  • sq_31 minutes ago
    The article mentions, but doesn't explicitly state, that they're going to be using electron beam lithography. Makes sense for their low volume and/or prototype fab goal, but I'm curious how well that would work for prototyping to fab at high volume with the likes of TSMC or Intel.

    I would assume that re-targeting a design to a different fab's process would change enough about it that you might as well just do verification in simulation rather than sidetrack through Fab2.

  • 9 minutes ago
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  • vatsachak35 minutes ago
    Great! Hopefully we can get 10 year behind technology from small fabs. There's so much you can do with a laptop from 2016
    • pulse72 minutes ago
      With electron-beam lithography you can build transistors with gate lengths down to 1 to 3 nanometers.
    • 16 minutes ago
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  • d_silinan hour ago
    One of the most interesting technologies that is not about LLMs/AIs.
  • holoduke11 minutes ago
    How could would ut be that your company or university or even at home has its own chip machine. Design your 5b transistor chip and bake and process it the same day. Doable I would say.
  • eikenberryan hour ago
    Is this an ASML competitor?
    • re-thcan hour ago
      No, quoting the article:

      > only really suits prototyping and low-volume runs rather than high-volume production at commercial foundries

      • ferniea few seconds ago
        Aww, I really wanted a cottage industry of chip manufacturing