Hello list!
A while ago I came across a very interessting high-temperature CMOS process on SOI for a client of mine.
https://www.ims.fraunhofer.de/en/Business_Units_and_Core_Competencies/High-T...
So, as I ask for manufacturing the manager told me, this process will be discontinued for economic reasons..
After some emails for and back offering help, publishing this process free and open, as Netscape did with their browser, I had a long call today with the higher management level. Well, he does not seems to be quite convinced to doing so. From his perspective, this would cost him money to support us, publishing all material they have in a god feasible way, mainly to pay his employees role.
I guess, somewhere was the hope, another fab would licensed the stuff.. And he asked quite directly, what we would pay to get the process. As I understood, the process fits exactly into their machine park and has some quirk in exotic material and fabrication steps. So it wouldn't be a one-by-one transfer into a the public.
My question is: Can we deal with that as Ransomware? Setting up a world-wide campaign of open-source enthusiasts to buy this process? I do not know about which amount of money he is thinking... I really know, if he put this process just into his safe, in a couple of years the process is dead for some reasons. All the developers are gone already, some old machines are already saled or scraped. He can not earn a batch of money with this process anymore, otherwise this would be still in usage, so he just likes to sale the leftovers.
Can or should we offer, let's say, one or two million? Or not? How much would it cost him to pay a couple of engineers to release the information to us and we'll do the rework and publishing?
Can we challenge this German Research institute in a way, it would give away the process "voluntarily"? E.g., can we argue with "public money - public code"?
What do you think?? All creative thinking welcome :-)
Regards, Hagen.
Hi,
If Fraunhofer does not want to run that process anymore themselves, the question is: Who wants to setup the factory for that process to run it? Will we do it in the Libresilicon shipping containers? Do you think that any Fab will be interested to take this process and implement it? Can we ask that fab to cover the costs? Would it make sense to just publish the process without having a factory that wants to run the process? Even in the long run? How much effort do you think it will be for the engineers to collect and hand over the documentation? Which parts do you expect from the handover? Process documentation? Test-Wafers Designs? Measurement Data? Standard cell libraries? Any physical objects like actual Test-Wafers for comparison? Configuration files for various Software and machines? (What about the software licenses ...?)
Best regards, Philipp
The question is... how much do they wanna have for a process they're discontinuing? Didn't the process make them enough to make break-even by now? We should have some video conference with them, in which we discuss what Libresilicon is about, and maybe instead of buying the IP, we might even negotiate their longterm support out of it. But maybe I'm just an optimist because I'm used to Chinese culture... Haha...
Seriously. Introduce us. Lets have a meeting.
Cheers -lev
On Thursday, February 3, 2022 6:12:52 PM WET Hagen SANKOWSKI wrote:
Hello list!
A while ago I came across a very interessting high-temperature CMOS process on SOI for a client of mine.
https://www.ims.fraunhofer.de/en/Business_Units_and_Core_Competencies/High-T emperature-Electronics/Technologies/HT-SOI-CMOS.html
So, as I ask for manufacturing the manager told me, this process will be discontinued for economic reasons..
After some emails for and back offering help, publishing this process free and open, as Netscape did with their browser, I had a long call today with the higher management level. Well, he does not seems to be quite convinced to doing so. From his perspective, this would cost him money to support us, publishing all material they have in a god feasible way, mainly to pay his employees role.
I guess, somewhere was the hope, another fab would licensed the stuff.. And he asked quite directly, what we would pay to get the process. As I understood, the process fits exactly into their machine park and has some quirk in exotic material and fabrication steps. So it wouldn't be a one-by-one transfer into a the public.
My question is: Can we deal with that as Ransomware? Setting up a world-wide campaign of open-source enthusiasts to buy this process? I do not know about which amount of money he is thinking... I really know, if he put this process just into his safe, in a couple of years the process is dead for some reasons. All the developers are gone already, some old machines are already saled or scraped. He can not earn a batch of money with this process anymore, otherwise this would be still in usage, so he just likes to sale the leftovers.
Can or should we offer, let's say, one or two million? Or not? How much would it cost him to pay a couple of engineers to release the information to us and we'll do the rework and publishing?
Can we challenge this German Research institute in a way, it would give away the process "voluntarily"? E.g., can we argue with "public money - public code"?
What do you think?? All creative thinking welcome :-)
Regards, Hagen.
On 2/4/22 2:09 AM, David Lanzendörfer wrote:
The question is... how much do they wanna have for a process they're discontinuing? Didn't the process make them enough to make break-even by now? We should have some video conference with them, in which we discuss what Libresilicon is about, and maybe instead of buying the IP, we might even negotiate their longterm support out of it. But maybe I'm just an optimist because I'm used to Chinese culture... Haha...
Seriously. Introduce us. Lets have a meeting.
Well, this was kinda such a conference.
I got the appointment by surprise - after long time calling the (nearly retired?) "process owner".
After introducing Libresilicon, we talked about the current situation.My impression is, that he does not like to invest any money into the process anymore but wouldn't resist getting money out of them.
So I draw this ASCII-art here for the flow chart he might have in mind
+----------------+ .-------------> | process active | <------------. | +----------------+ | | | | | v | | ---------------- | | yes / \ | * <----------- ( expenses covered ) 0.75 Mill | | \ ??? / per year? | | ---------------- | | | no | | v | | ---------------- | | yes / profitable \ | '------------- ( costumer ahead ) | \ ??? / | ---------------- | | no | v | ---------------- | +---------------+ yes / any \ | | process sold | <--- ( buyer ahead ) | +---------------+ \ ??? / | ^ ---------------- | | | no | | v | | +----------------+ | | | process stalled| | | +----------------+ | | | | | v | | ---------------- | | / profitable \ yes | | ( costumer ahead ) ------------' | \ ??? / | ---------------- | | no | v | ---------------- | yes / any \ '------------- ( buyer ahead ) \ ??? / ---------------- | no v +----------------+ | process dead | +----------------+
The process is currently in the 'stalled' state.
Where do you see a win-win for him and us? I guess, the magic "red envelope" (Hong Bao) does not work here.. :-(
BTW, as I saw in papers from 2012, they already had an similar high-temperature CMOS SOI process on 1 micron (called H10) which is already gone. He was the manager in charge also this time.
Regards, Hagen.
libresilicon-developers@list.libresilicon.com
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David Lanzendörfer -
Hagen SANKOWSKI -
Philipp Gühring