Mosis

MOSIS is a low cost prototyping and small-volume production service for custom ICs. Since 1981 MOSIS has fabricated more than 50,000 integrated circuit designs for commercial firms, government agencies, and universities. MOSIS provides designers with a single interface to the constantly changing technologies of the semiconductor industry. Mask generation, wafer fabrication, and device packaging are contracted to leading industry vendors. The cost of fabricating prototype quantities is kept low by aggregating multiple designs onto one mask set. This allows customers to share overhead costs associated with mask making, wafer fabrication, and assembly. MOSIS gives access to a wide variety of semiconductor processes offered by many different foundries, including AMIS, austriamicrosystems, IBM and TSMC. A variety of CAD tools and libraries, both foundry-specific and vendor-independent, can be used to prepare designs for MOSIS.