About this corner
A great deal is said about chip prototyping these days. That individuals can now make their own chips. That the field has opened up. And that one company in the middle of it all collapsed. Most of this, though, is somebody's reading of events. Here we do something narrower: we take the publicly available data, count it ourselves, and work out what can actually be said as fact. Where the numbers came from and how we counted them is written into every article. Follow the same steps and you will get the same result. What the numbers mean is for you to decide.
What Are People Actually Making on Shuttle Runs?
Shared wafers have put custom chips within reach of individuals. So what is actually being submitted? We counted 3,625 designs across 19 shuttles over three years, and traced how the money behind the whole arrangement has shifted.
Read this articleWhat we promise
We always show our method. Which data, retrieved when, sorted by what criteria. Wherever judgement enters the classification, the criteria are set out in the text. Anyone should be able to repeat the count and check us.
We state the limitations too. What fell outside the classification, which comparisons are not like for like, what we could not establish. Inconvenient numbers stay in.
We do not draw conclusions. What the figures mean depends on who is reading them. Our job ends once the material for judgement is on the table.