From Idea to Chip Design in Minutes – With Tiny Tapeout 6 You Can Design your Custom Silicon for Just $300

With Tiny Tapeout 6, you can design your custom ICs, get them fabricated, and then receive them on a development board, all for only $300.

Matthew Venn has announced the launch of Tiny Tapeout 6, an educational program designed to assist beginners with their chip design. Participants will have the opportunity to see their designs manufactured into physical chips in partnership with Skywater Technology Foundry.

The new version maintains the same design capacity as the previous one but introduces additional features such as power gating, mixed-signal support, and analog pins.

For those interested in including analog functions in their designs, there’s now the option to add analog I/O pins, with each starting at $40, requiring a minimum use of two tiles. The cost for participating has changed due to updates in chip packaging, with the first 100 individual submissions costing $150 for one tile, the ASIC, and the demo board. After the first 100, or for entries from businesses and universities, the price goes up to $300. Additional tiles can be added for $50 each.

Participants advancing to the design phase of the initiative can use Wokwi, a tool for digital design and simulation, or they can create their chip designs using a programming language designed for hardware, like Verilog or Amaranth.

All the chip designs from Tiny Tapeout 6 will be combined into one IC and placed on a development board. Users can control specific projects on this board using Python scripts, enabling or disabling them. This feature simplifies the process of testing and utilizing their designs in real scenarios.

The current project run began on Jan 30, 2024, and will close on April 19, 2024, which means there are only 25 days left for submissions at the time of this note. For additional information and updates, it’s advised to visit the Tiny Tapeout website.

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