Semiconductor design platform Efabless has introduced it’s shutting down its operations with quick impact — leaving Matt Venn’s Tiny Tapeout on the hunt for an alternate approach to affordably manufacture its contributors’ creations.
“As a result of funding challenges,” a discover on the Efabless web site, which in any other case seems to stay operational and nonetheless advertises the corporate’s companies, declares, “Efabless has shut down operations till additional discover. We remorse any inconvenience and can present updates as accessible.”
Semiconductor design platform Efabless has introduced its quick shutdown, together with its chipIgnite platform. (📹: Efabless)
The announcement, which got here lower than a month after Efabless’ Michael Wishart promised “a vibrant future” for the corporate with a “go-to-market technique [which] is gaining traction with 50 tutorial establishments utilizing Efabless and 80 industrial designs taped out since our inception,” comes as sources counsel a grant on which the corporate had been banking didn’t materialize.
The closure shuts down Efabless’ chipIgnite platform, which sought to decrease the price of customized silicon chip manufacturing with a multi-project wafer (MPW) method wherein designs from totally different submitters are positioned on a single silicon wafer to unfold the associated fee out.
It is chipIgnite which served because the manufacturing back-end for Tiny Tapeout, a venture from Matt Venn that invited designers skilled and in any other case to submit open supply chip designs for manufacturing — packing compact tile-based designs right into a multi-project chip on a chipIgnite multi-project wafer to additional drop the associated fee all the way down to as little as 100 {dollars} per design. In consequence, the present Tiny Tapeout manufacturing run is on maintain — and questions stay as as to if the prevailing submitted however not-yet manufactured runs will happen.
“Proper now we’ve TT08 [Tiny Tapeout Run 8] awaiting packaging and TT09 remains to be within the SkyWater Know-how fab,” Venn explains, referring to Efabless’ associate semiconductor fabrication agency. “These chips symbolize an enormous funding of time and power from tons of of individuals and we presently don’t know if we’ll obtain them. The present TT10 shuttle and future Sky130 [SkyWater 130nm process] shuttles are paused whereas we discover choices for Sky130 and different processes.
“We have already got an current relationship with IHP, which provides an analogous 130nm course of. We have accomplished two experimental tapeouts with them, and our subsequent public shuttle will probably be with them in June. We’re additionally looking for a path to manufacture on GlobalFoundries GF180, an current open supply PDK [Process Design Kit].”
For now, all Tiny Tapeout followers can do is watch the web site for extra information — and if the in-production runs do find yourself being canceled, Venn has confirmed that refunds can be supplied to everybody affected.
