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da-alex • today at 1:10 PM • 0 replies • view on HN

Would be really nice honestly. But I don't think it will be coming anytime soon, it's just too expensive to build a chip. The one-time costs for masks are just much more expensive as for PCBs, so wafer shuttle services are still really expensive when pooled PCBs are really cheap. And any machines that would be cheaper for prototyping (direct laser writing or direct e-beam writing) don't scale to mass production.

You can already make (tiny) chips for a somewhat affordable cost with tiny tapeout. But that's still not nearly as cheap as PCB prototypes and with much longer wait times.