Talk:MOSIS

MOSIS in UK

There also exists a compny called MOSIS in the UK (MOSIS International Systems Ltd) that specialises in measuring the stability of floating systems (ships, semi-submersibles etc.) Should be mentioned or does the MOSIS discussed here have special status Subsea (talk) 14:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Extending this article

MOSIS had a huge impact on VLSI research, and deserves a much more extensive article. I will work on it as I get time.

Note that I am not an unbiased observer; I supported MOSIS for several years then worked directly for the project for several years in the 1980s and 90s.

Some (annotated) references:

• The complete USC/ISI December 1979 -- September 1980 annual report includes early development of the MOSIS service. Although the report only covers through Sept. 1980, it mentions that the service went live in January 1981, with 5-micron nMOS. The first trial run is described as, "In August 1980 MOSIS accepted designs for the first fabrication run using the software developed for automatic interaction with users. This run had 65 projects submitted by designers from 8 organizations: ISI, UCLA, Caltech, Jet Propulsion Lab, Stanford University, National Bureau of Standards, Carnegie-Mellon University and Washington University at St. Louis. These projects were packed into 18 dies on the wafer.": https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA115584
• The complete USC/ISI July 1981 -- June 1982 annual report says, "After a period of debugging, the MOSIS system became operational in January 1981. The support of nMOS fabrication at 5 and 4 micron feature size became the standard routine operation. The support of 3 micron nMOS and of CMOS is approaching this state, too.": https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA127288
• The complete USC/ISI July 1982 -- June 1983 annual report says, "Over 40 universities and hundreds of designers now submit VLSI designs in electronic form via any network to MOStS. MOSIS delivers chips and will soon deliver user-specified printed circuit boards to designers 30 to 35 days after receipt of a design.": https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA145776
• The complete USC/ISI July 1983 -- June 1984 annual report lists 35 total MOSIS "runs": 17 4-micron nMOS runs; 5 3-micron nMOS runs; 11 3-micron CMOS/Bulk runs; and 2 3-micron CMOS/SOS runs: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA157991
• A 1984 VLSI conference paper, reprinted as an ISI technical report: https://www.isi.edu/content/tr/rs-83-122.pdf
• The 1 March 1984 user manual, issued as ISI/TR-84-128 and DTIC Accession Number: ADA139744: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA139744
• A short 1988 article on the service: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/936
• A crucial history including a table of early project counts in a 1991 DARPA history: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA241725
• An extended article covering both the technical problems solved in the service and some human history: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164121298100225
• A 1997 interview with the director at the time: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/592325
• Another short 2000 conference paper: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-015-9506-3_13
• The oldest production run schedule published on the WWW and archived by the Wayback Machine is only 2004, when MOSIS was already 23 years old. At that point, many runs were lambda=0.20 microns: https://web.archive.org/web/20040803030101/http://www.mosis.edu/products/fab/schedule/
• A 2024 USC press release on a successor service: https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2024/06/the-vision-of-mosis-2-0/
• A flyer by DARPA on its VLSI efforts, undated but definitely no older than 2007, states that MOSIS was created in January 1981: https://www.darpa.mil/sites/default/files/VLSILayoutfinal.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rdviii (talk • contribs) 07:38, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Later collections of information:

• Lynn Conway collected some important materials on the early days of the VLSI revolution at https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/International/ImplementationServices.html
• In 2023, Eric Gilliam wrote about the early days of MOSIS at https://www.freaktakes.com/p/mosis, includes links to documents such as an undated ASCII text user manual.
• USC/ISI Technical Reports listing MOSIS at https://www.isi.edu/results/technical-reports/?q=MOSIS&qs=0&qy=

 (ftp.isi.edu is no longer active although the index still points to it; at least some of the old technical reports are available via the Internet Archive, e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20160322124140/ftp://ftp.isi.edu/isi-pubs/rs-84-139.pdf)

Rdviii (talk) 00:13, 21 August 2025 (UTC)

Additions begun

I have begun updating this page based on the historical documents accumulated above in the Talk page. Rdviii (talk) 09:12, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Bad link/historical numbers.

The first referenced link https://www.mosis.com/what-is-mosis is no longer valid (as of 2025-09-16). The Internet Archive includes a number of archived copies of it.

• A 2012 page cites the number of fabricated projects at "more than 50,000": https://web.archive.org/web/20120330023718/https://www.mosis.com/what-is-mosis
• A 2016 page cites the number of fabricated projects at "more than 60,000": https://web.archive.org/web/20161202154206/https://www.mosis.com/what-is-mosis

Rdviii (talk) 09:20, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Fixed. Rdviii (talk) 01:50, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Fabs

Unless I missed it somewhere, those early tech reports don't list the fab services used. That would be great historical info to add. Rdviii (talk) 01:51, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

GaAs

MOSIS also supported GaAs as well as nMOS and CMOS, but I don't have specific info on that yet. Rdviii (talk) 01:52, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

First run was completed by January 1990.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/112532 Rdviii (talk) 02:58, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

End of educational support

According to https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.02055, "MOSIS fabricated free chips for university VLSI classes, initially with NSF support and later with profits from their commercial operations, but ceased offering this service in 2020." (Found via https://nsf-ic-education.com/) Rdviii (talk) 02:26, 17 September 2025 (UTC)