Quote from: ShadesOfMarble on September 06, 2012, 11:00:48 AM

Quote from: ttul on September 06, 2012, 04:34:46 AM

Not trying to throw the hate on or anything, but I do know quite a bit about ASIC manufacturing, and if you're still shopping around for a mass manufacturer, your delivery date is at least six months away.

Why is that? Given they have a prototype running, this would mean the successfully produced a chip. Why can't they go just to any fab and let them produce this (working) chip? Especially if they are using some old proccess like 130 nm there shouldn't be much trouble. I'm just guessing/wondering - I don't know much about ASICs

Each fab has its own process, a chip designed for fab A can not just be produced in fab B. Porting a design to another fab involves a non trivial amount of work and new maskset. Maskset being the single most expensive item for getting any asic built.

If the OP already has a working prototype, it would mean he already produced the maskset and they probably had a few test wafers done. Assuming those test chips are found to be working properly, going from there to mass production of the chip is just a matter of ordering more wafers; it typically takes a few months before you get those back from the fab. Of course there is a lot of other things to be done, chip packaging, PCBs, software etc.