We submitted Tiny Tapeout 2 back in December, and last week I received the chips from Efabless. Most first chip designs fail, but you never hear about it because the big companies keep it a secret. So we thought - why not do the world’s first public silicon bring up? Thankfully the chips worked, and you can watch the whole stream here. We’ve since found 1 errata, but luckily not a show stopper.

I’m very happy to have over 140 designs from 30 countries submitted to Tiny Tapeout 4! Top level statistics: Total standard cells 82126 Maximum cells used was 6813 for project 033 Maximum utilisation was 87.18% for project 016 Total wire length was 2607 mm Thanks to everyone who submitted and all the contributors. Also a huge thanks to Efabless Corporation for sponsoring the project! Tiny Tapeout 5 is already open and will close in early November 2023.

Using the Tiny User Project tool, people can quickly submit a Tiny Tapeout design to the MPW lottery. The low barrier to entry makes this a great tool to try variations on a design, test faster I/O speeds on an MPW tapeout, or simply compare tapeout processes using a different submission venue. @Proppy developed the an easy-to-use tool as an extension to the Tiny Tapeout flow. Proppy’s template repository uses GitHub actions to add a design to the Efabless Caravel User Project.

I’m happy to announce that Tiny Tapeout 2 was successfully submitted for manufacture in December 2022! 164 designs were included on the tapeout. Update! Tiny Tapeout 2 chips are back and working! If you’re unfamiliar, Tiny Tapeout is an educational project that makes it easier and cheaper than ever to get your digital designs manufactured on a real chip! We had a first trial, Tiny Tapeout in September 2022 that was destined for MPW7.