About Us > What is MOSIS
What is MOSIS?
MOSIS is a low-cost prototyping and production volume service for VLSI circuit development. Since 1981, MOSIS has fabricated more than 50,000 circuit designs for commercial firms, government agencies, and research and educational institutions around the world.
A Single Interface to the Semiconductor Industry
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.
Low Cost
MOSIS keeps the cost of fabricating prototype quantities 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 offers minimum (e.g. 40 die) and medium (500, 2000 die, etc.) quantities within the regularly scheduled (typically monthly) Multi-project Runs. Dedicated runs (also known as COT or Customer Owned Tooling runs) are available for all processes. Dedicated runs can be scheduled to start at any time.
Access to Technology
MOSIS provides access to a wide variety of semiconductor processes offered by many different foundries.
Compatibility with Tools and Libraries
A variety of design flows (digital, analog, mixed-signal) can be used with a number of different CAD tools, technology files, design kits, libraries and IP to create designs for processes accessed by MOSIS.