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Thread: Ideas for different size silicon area

9 Discord messages from ℹ️ - Information/general/threads/ideas-for-different-size-silicon-area.md.

Category: ℹ️ - Information Parent channel: #general Thread ID: 1408145176605626388

Messages: 9

message-1408179459714187455

2025-08-21T20:02:25.905+00:00 — Tim 'mithro' Ansell (@mithro_)

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message-1408179465259057183

2025-08-21T20:02:27.227+00:00 — Tim 'mithro' Ansell (@mithro_)

Content

To be a little clearer;
 * (a) Eventually I hope that I can support any die size and use something like laser dicing. For now that is an added complexity / risk it doesn't make sense to take on (kinda like the gf180mcu process optimization idea that I abandoned).

 * (b) In the shorter term, given that you get back bare die by default, I believe there could be a few options for post processing to split them into even smaller units.
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message-1408179950133182577

2025-08-21T20:04:22.83+00:00 — Tim 'mithro' Ansell (@mithro_)

Content

At the moment it is $7 USD per die -- so if we could divide the die into 8 parts, that would make it under $1 per die.
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message-1408180191339090060

2025-08-21T20:05:20.338+00:00 — Tim 'mithro' Ansell (@mithro_)

Content

Given that 3 * BOM cost;
 * $7 USD per die really means a >$100 USD product.
 * $1 USD per die means that <$30 USD or even $10 USD type products become viable.
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message-1408180197374558339

2025-08-21T20:05:21.777+00:00 — tnt (@246tnt)

Content

Ok, I wasn't really sure that dicing "a second time" was something doable at all at scale ...
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message-1408180615089623063

2025-08-21T20:07:01.368+00:00 — Tim 'mithro' Ansell (@mithro_)

Content

@tnt - "scale" is a relative term, ~1,000 units it pretty small for PCBA and non-existant scale for semiconductor people.
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message-1408182154525020364

2025-08-21T20:13:08.398+00:00 — Tim 'mithro' Ansell (@mithro_)

Content

Actually, if it's $7 USD per die and you want $1 USD per sub-die, then you can spend ~$1 USD per die to do the dicing.
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message-1408183116106829895

2025-08-21T20:16:57.657+00:00 — tnt (@246tnt)

Content

By scale I meant, not 10 units done by hand.
Because if you get the die in a gel pack like we dit from the skywater runs, I'm not sure how you put them in a laser dicing machine "in bulk" since the ones I've seen take full wafers ...
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message-1408183479161585766

2025-08-21T20:18:24.216+00:00 — tnt (@246tnt)

Content

But it's not like I have tons of experience with dicing so it's very possible there is a way 🤷
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