wafer.space Community - announcements

Tim 'mithro' Ansell 04/01/2026 00:41

2

Good news @everyone, April has started with a few very productive days for wafer.space! GF has finished manufacturing the Run #1 wafers and they should be with the dicing house on Monday. Will keep you informed as that progresses. I gave a talk at Hackware here in Singapore and the slides for the talk can be found at https://wafer.space/hw26 with the recording available @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6Z0_Krhshc @Andrew Wingate has also arrived safely in Singapore to supervise the die sorting machine and he will be posting updates to the #die-sorter channel as things progress. Thanks to help from @stuart, progress has also been made on getting the #cob packaging moving forward.

Engineers.SG

wafer.space: Silicon now $4 USD, get inspired from Run #1! - Hackwa...

15

5

3

4

2

4

3

1

Hi @everyone! A couple of updates for Run #1:

We received the first 5 diced wafers last Friday and @Andrew Wingate is currently working on sorting the die. It is likely that the first round of packages will ship early next week.

The remaining 15 diced wafers will be delivered on this Friday.

Early parts of the chip on board packaging effort will hopefully start late next week.

Most people will receive multiple shipments with different items in them.

Hoping to have an Crowd Supply update with pictures and such in the next day or two.

The early bird pricing for Run #2 also only has ~2 weeks left. If you want to get the discounted price, you should order as soon as possible as things like credit card delays may mean your payment doesn't clear by the deadline. Please reach out if you have any questions, concerns, or thoughts!

Picture of wafer.space Run #1 silicon focused on the whole reticle

Picture of wafer.space Run #1 silicon focused on the wafer

23

11

8

5

Congratulations !!!

15:11

What's the wafer diameter btw ?

300mm

1

Matt Venn

300mm

Actually 200mm wafers here.

2

Whoops

1

@everyone - Quick update from Run #1 Everyone on Run #1 should have gotten a FedEx shipment notification. These are the bare die from the first wafer that was used for testing the sorting process and definitely not handled delicately. We have marked them as "for display purposes". To help promote Run #2, please share photos and anything else! I also fly to China late tonight to start work on the chip on board packaging stuff with @stuart

13

16

1

2

1

@everyone - Another quick update from Run #1 I'm getting a lot of notifications that the first round of packages from the run are being delivered. It would be great if people could confirm that they have received them. It's our first time doing international shipments of this type and I'd like to hear about any issues or problems that occurred. These are just some initial bare die from the first wafer that we were doing a lot of testing with. The first test batch of chip-on-board packaged parts will likely go out late tomorrow (it will be abit longer for people who have non-1x1 parts and custom PCBs but we are working on it). The final shipments which include larger batches of bare die suitable for your own wire bonding and hopefully higher reliability chip-on-board packaged parts and are likely to go out sometime the first week of May. If everyone could all do me a favor and share photos, excitement and other details about your projects on social media and help promote the second run that is currently open at https://buy.wafer.space, it would be greatly appreciated! Tiny Tapeout also has an open shuttle targeting the second run for those who are just starting out too.

11

7

2

7

1

3

@everyone - Just another quick update! The first round of chip on board packages went out yesterday (only 1x1 parts using the standard cob PCB layout). These packages have ~25 of people's die mounted on the PCBs. This was our first attempt at doing this workflow and here are a bunch of things we are working to improve before we do bigger runs. Could everyone confirm when they have received their packages and try to test them as soon as possible? It would be good to first confirm you got the expected die - I forgot to do a visual inspection of that before shipping. From our tests with the Tiny Tapeout die, we had ~20% of the packaged die fail testing, likely to bond wire lifting off pads. We have a bunch of pending changes which we hopefully will reduce that to something more like 5% or 1%. This version of the PCB also has a small error which caused the PWR_AUX_1 trace not to be connected to the header. We will probably be working on the non-1x1 die and custom PCB layout stuff this week.

Tiny Tapeout board being tested pre-epoxy.

4

5

3

Tim 'mithro' Ansell

@everyone - Just another quick update! The first round of chip on board packages went out yesterday (only 1x1 parts using the standard cob PCB layout). These packages have ~25 of people's die mounted on the PCBs. This was our first attempt at doing this workflow and here are a bunch of things we are working to improve before we do bigger runs. Could everyone confirm when they have received their packages and try to test them as soon as possible? It would be good to first confirm you got the expected die - I forgot to do a visual inspection of that before shipping. From our tests with the Tiny Tapeout die, we had ~20% of the packaged die fail testing, likely to bond wire lifting off pads. We have a bunch of pending changes which we hopefully will reduce that to something more like 5% or 1%. This version of the PCB also has a small error which caused the PWR_AUX_1 trace not to be connected to the header. We will probably be working on the non-1x1 die and custom PCB layout stuff this week.

it'd be really cool if these updates landed on the wafer.space website in blogpost form one could point people at more easily than discord posts (when time permits, obviously, clearly you folks are busy)

1

Brian Swetland

it'd be really cool if these updates landed on the wafer.space website in blogpost form one could point people at more easily than discord posts (when time permits, obviously, clearly you folks are busy)

I would love to find someone to (potentially pay) to help do that and also post to Crowd Supply, LinkedIn, and such. I have a WIP @ https://github.com/wafer-space/wafer-space.github.io/pull/82 but keep getting distracted. I'm also terrible at marketing them as well

Import Crowd Supply campaign updates as blog posts by mithro · Pul...

Summary Import all Crowd Supply campaign updates from GF180MCU Run 1 as blog posts on the wafer.space news section, with proper formatting, images, galleries, and author attribution. What's...

2

Tim 'mithro' Ansell

@everyone - Just another quick update! The first round of chip on board packages went out yesterday (only 1x1 parts using the standard cob PCB layout). These packages have ~25 of people's die mounted on the PCBs. This was our first attempt at doing this workflow and here are a bunch of things we are working to improve before we do bigger runs. Could everyone confirm when they have received their packages and try to test them as soon as possible? It would be good to first confirm you got the expected die - I forgot to do a visual inspection of that before shipping. From our tests with the Tiny Tapeout die, we had ~20% of the packaged die fail testing, likely to bond wire lifting off pads. We have a bunch of pending changes which we hopefully will reduce that to something more like 5% or 1%. This version of the PCB also has a small error which caused the PWR_AUX_1 trace not to be connected to the header. We will probably be working on the non-1x1 die and custom PCB layout stuff this week.

What does it mean that this line is not connected? Will the chip still work anyway?

asic destroyer

What does it mean that this line is not connected? Will the chip still work anyway?

If your part doesn't need that bond, then it will work.

It seeeeeems that some careful rework could patch the missing connexion, but I have no idea what PWR_AUX_1 does.

yg

It seeeeeems that some careful rework could patch the missing connexion, but I have no idea what PWR_AUX_1 does.

yeah it's not going to be substantially difficult rework, relatively speaking, just expose the trace and solder a jumper.

The trace is on the top, the pad is on the bottom, missing a via

15:38

If you used the default template that pad is just a power pad, redudant with the other so not a big deal.

2

@Tim 'mithro' Ansell I started a little project to use claude to produce variants of articles for different platforms and schedule posting them.. want me to dig it out?

Tim 'mithro' Ansell

@everyone - Just another quick update! The first round of chip on board packages went out yesterday (only 1x1 parts using the standard cob PCB layout). These packages have ~25 of people's die mounted on the PCBs. This was our first attempt at doing this workflow and here are a bunch of things we are working to improve before we do bigger runs. Could everyone confirm when they have received their packages and try to test them as soon as possible? It would be good to first confirm you got the expected die - I forgot to do a visual inspection of that before shipping. From our tests with the Tiny Tapeout die, we had ~20% of the packaged die fail testing, likely to bond wire lifting off pads. We have a bunch of pending changes which we hopefully will reduce that to something more like 5% or 1%. This version of the PCB also has a small error which caused the PWR_AUX_1 trace not to be connected to the header. We will probably be working on the non-1x1 die and custom PCB layout stuff this week.

that is so cool, i love it. Would it be possible in the next round to do different formats of PCB (e.g. 40/64 pin DIP)?

Rob Taylor

that is so cool, i love it. Would it be possible in the next round to do different formats of PCB (e.g. 40/64 pin DIP)?

ah, found https://github.com/AvalonSemiconductors/gf180mcu_cob/tree/main/74pad-mp-dip and am happy

gf180mcu_cob/74pad-mp-dip at main · AvalonSemiconductors/gf180mcu_cob

Experimenting with Chip On Board setups for GF180MCU chips, most importantly gf180 Caravel. - AvalonSemiconductors/gf180mcu_cob

This is specific to my multi-project die's custom padframe. It will not work with the default padframe.

@everyone - Great news from the Tiny Tapeout team and @tnt, it seems that the Tiny Tapeout chips on Run #1 are working! You can see a bunch of the results on the Tiny Tapeout Discord (https://discord.gg/QRZSJ4Nz) in the https://discord.com/channels/1009193568256135208/1492403296747651072 channel. We still have a few issues to fix around the chip-on-board bonding and will continue to working on that before doing the final runs. @Leo Moser (mole99) has also discovered some interesting artifacts through microscope imagery. I believe most other groups with 1x1 projects should have also received their die and I'm excited to see how testing goes. Please do report on the discord and share what you are doing and any issues you are having. Others might be have similar problems and be able to help you diagnose problems and offer possible fixes.

Tiny Tapeout die from Run #1 mounted on wafer.space chip-on-board PCB and connected to a Tiny Tapeout test board

13

15

9

2

8

2

@everyone - Just a quick reminder that there is just under 24 hours left to get the early bird discount! You have till 30 April 2026 @ 11:59 PM AoE (see in your timezone @ https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20260430T2359&p1=3399 ) before the prices for slots go up. PS I'll also be attending Hackaday Supercon Europe in Italy and will have a bunch of silicon in hand to show off.

10

2