Tiny Tapeout hit as eFabless closes
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Open source chip pioneer eFabless has shut down over the weekend, hitting the latest shuttle runs for the Tiny Tapeout project.
eFabless, based in Palo Alto, California, had been struggling to raise funds in recent months. “Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were unable to complete our latest funding round, As a result, eFabless has shut down operations until further notice,” said Mike Wishart, CEO of eFabless, which provided an open source chip design flow as well as wafer shuttle services.
The company supported the Tiny Tapeout project that allows chip makers to use a multi-project wafer service for a few dollars. The current call is for designs for the TT10 run on the 130nm process at Skywater Technology..
“Right now we have TT08 awaiting packaging and TT09 is still in the Skywater fab,” said Matt Venn. “These chips represent a huge investment of time and energy from hundreds of people and we currently don’t know if we’ll receive them.”
Venn is planning to offer a refund if he can’t ship those chips. There are 369 designs on TT09 and 135 on TT08 and these can take up to a year to go through the fabrication and packaging process.
“The current TT10 shuttle and future Sky130 shuttles are paused while we explore options for Sky130 and other processes,” said Venn. “We already have an existing relationship with IHP, which offers a similar 130nm process, and our next public shuttle will likely be with them in June. We are also trying to find a route to manufacturing on GlobalFoundries GF180, an existing open source PDK.”
“At this time was are unable to provide a plan or definitive timeline for project delivery,” said Wishart. Through its chipIgnite project, eFabless has worked with 50 academic institutions and 80 commercial designs have taped out.
www.efabless.com; www.tinytapeout.com/runs
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