MOSIS (Metal Oxide Semiconductor Implementation Service) is
multi-project wafer service Multi-project chip (MPC), and multi-project wafer (MPW) semiconductor manufacturing arrangements allow customers to share mask and microelectronics wafer fabrication cost between several designs or projects.
With the MPC arrangement, one chip is a ...
that provides
metal–oxide–semiconductor
The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET, MOS-FET, or MOS FET) is a type of field-effect transistor (FET), most commonly fabricated by the controlled oxidation of silicon. It has an insulated gate, the voltage of which d ...
(MOS) chip design tools and related services that enable universities, government agencies, research institutes and businesses to prototype chips efficiently and cost-effectively.
Operated by the
University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute (ISI), MOSIS combines customers' orders onto shared
multi-project wafers that speed production and reduce costs compared with underutilized single-project wafers. Customers are able to debug and adjust designs, or to commission small-volume runs, without making major production investments. Fabrication costs are also shared by combining multiple designs from a single customer onto one "mask set," or wafer template. According to MOSIS, the service has delivered more than 60,000
integrated circuit designs.
MOSIS was created in 1981 by ISI's
Danny Cohen, an Internet pioneer who also developed Voice over Internet Protocol and Video over Internet Protocol. It was based on the
revolutionary VLSI design methodology of
Carver Mead
Carver Andress Mead (born May 1, 1934) is an American scientist and engineer. He currently holds the position of Gordon and Betty Moore Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), ...
and
Lynn Conway
Lynn Ann Conway (born January 2, 1938) is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer and transgender activist.
She worked at IBM in the 1960s and invented generalized dynamic instruction handling, a key advance used in out-of-or ...
, who pioneered and/or popularized the use of technology-independent design rules and modular cell-based, hierarchical system design, testing this new approach to rapid prototyping and short-run fabrication at
Xerox PARC
PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...
. One of the first e-commerce providers, MOSIS also launched the "fabless foundry" industry, in which vendors outsource
chip Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is a type of immunoprecipitation experimental technique used to investigate the interaction between proteins and DNA in the cell. It aims to determine whether specific proteins are associated with specific genom ...
fabrication rather than manufacturing them in-house. Thousands of students also have learned chip design in MOSIS-associate programs.
Many early MOSIS users were students trying IC layout techniques from the seminal book ''Introduction to VLSI Design'' () published in 1980 by
Caltech
The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
professor
Carver Mead
Carver Andress Mead (born May 1, 1934) is an American scientist and engineer. He currently holds the position of Gordon and Betty Moore Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), ...
and
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
professor
Lynn Conway
Lynn Ann Conway (born January 2, 1938) is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer and transgender activist.
She worked at IBM in the 1960s and invented generalized dynamic instruction handling, a key advance used in out-of-or ...
.
Some early
reduced instruction set computing
In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set compu ...
(RISC) processors such as
MIPS (1984) and
SPARC
SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system develope ...
(1987) were run through MOSIS during their early design and testing phases.
See also
*
Mead and Conway revolution
Mead () is an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting honey mixed with water, and sometimes with added ingredients such as fruits, spices, grains, or hops. The alcoholic content ranges from about 3.5% ABV to more than 20%. The defining charact ...
References
{{reflist
External links
MOSIS web site(archived from 2005)
Integrated circuits
Semiconductor device fabrication