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there's no chance of DIY silicon fabs taking off, but the industry becoming more accessible to hobbyists is way more plausible

imho, the deeper problem is that there are just very few situations where you need a custom chip that can't be covered by existing options or FPGAs, and vanishingly few people have the expertise to get anything interesting done even if they had cheap access to fabs

(check out tiny tapeout, though!)



Sure, if one assumes people will focus on traditional CMOS design, and high-volume rapid fab processes.

Most people can't even make FPGA that work properly, and YOLO the simulation given metastability is beyond their users understanding.

>few people have the expertise to get anything interesting done even if they had cheap access to fabs

Chicken or egg problem... a walled garden simply gets fewer visitors, and people with expensive toys tend not to share. =3




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