Zero to ASIC Course

Hosted by Matt Venn

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Jan 2026

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Interviews and news from the world of Open Source Silicon, ASICs and Semiconductors.

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43 recent

January 19, 2026835 hr 31 min

Surviving Space: Radiation, Bit Flips, and Naked Silicon. An interview with Matthew Gill

A deep dive into radiation, bit flips, orbital hot spots, and what it really takes for silicon to survive in low Earth orbit.Follow Matthew Gill: https://www.linkedin.com/in/42-matthew-gill/00:00 Intro 01:30 Matthew is a nuclear engineer 02:26 How do you test without going to orbit? 07:01 How does a bit flip happen? 09:00 What does a hardened PDK and tooling look like? 11:31 ESD testing 14:15 RP2040 on HUNITY 19:39 What is LEO like? 23:35 Building a sensor to measure these effects 25:22 Open source silicon intersecting with space 30:26 What kind of shielding could we add? 33:54 Van Allen belts 39:18 Error detection 41:28 Wafer variability 44:05 Managing thermals 49:44 Thanks

November 4, 202524 min

Get started with Analog - Interview with Nanik Adnani.

take my analog course: https://www.zerotoasiccourse.com/analog/Nanik's distortion ASIC: https://www.tinytapeout.com/chips/tt0...Kelly Heaton's analog birds: https://www.kellyheatonstudio.com/dee...--00:00 Intro 00:55 Nanik Adnani 01:52 Why analog 03:46 Horizontal vs Vertical IP block s09:20 Advice for getting into industry 11:20 Analog Birds by Kelly Heaton 15:30 Guitar Distortion Pedal on Tiny Tapeout 17:50 The schematic isn't the hard part 20:51 130nm isn't as far from 7nm as you think 23:07 Do a Tiny Tapeout!

November 4, 202550 min

Testing your ASIC in Space! An interview with Tibor Herman and Pat Deegan

Tibor's slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/...Tiny Tapeout 6: https://tinytapeout.com/runs/tt06/Test code repository: https://github.com/psychogenic/spasic...Chat on the discord: https://tinytapeout.com/discordSign up for the newsletter: https://tinytapeout.com/#sign-up00:00 Intro 00:21 Tibor Bio 02:31 HUNITY 05:41 Previous missions 10:34 What orbit will it fly in? 17:09 Solar Panel Deployment 19:21 Mission Goals 24:07 Inside HUNITY 34:42 Tiny Tapeout integration 41:58 How to get involved 43:17 Communications 44:34 Sponsors 46:19 Vibration tests 48:30 Picking up the signals

November 4, 202559 min

MOSbius - A field programmable transistor array for chip designers - interview with Peter Kinget

Zero to ASIC course - https://www.zerotoasiccourse.com/MOSbius - https://mosbius.org/SSCS Chipathon - https://sscs.ieee.org/technical-commi...00:00 Intro 00:42 Peter Kinget 09:59 Blinky Demo 22:27 MOSBius Mission 25:37 Questions - Design 33:02 Questions - Safety 41:37 Questions - Future plans 50:03 Delta Sigma Demo 57:59 Outro

November 4, 202542 min

180 GHz chip design with open source tools - an interview with Shafin Hossain.

Design repo: https://github.com/shafinhossain/TO_M...OpenEMS script: https://github.com/VolkerMuehlhaus/op...00:00 Intro 00:41 Shafin intro 02:33 Ironman Inspiration 04:11 G band power amplifier on IHP 130 BiCMOS 15:37 Design Questions 25:47 Simulation Questions 29:00 Testing 31:48 General Questions 34:13 Tools Questions 37:36 How to contact Shafin 38:46 Plans for the future 40:38 Outro

May 13, 202437 min

Rest in peace Z80, long live the open source Z80!

00:00 intro 00:56 z80 04:54 Submitted to TT07 06:52 NMOS 08:22 dynamic memory 10:28 z80 was everything in one chip 12:00 hand layout 14:10 most widely used CPU in the 80s 17:27 Tiny Tapeout compromise 18:56 voltage compatibility 19:58 Fits in 4 TT tiles 21:09 comparison table 22:47 What is Tiny Tapeout 24:28 next steps 26:29 bond pads 28:09 multicore z80 28:59 pricing 29:30 why not use an FPGA? 30:30 what to use for 1.8v core? 31:02 all the classics? 31:53 important to preserve the old chips 32:50 the plan 35:19 how can you help?

March 1, 202430 min

Analog Philosophy - interview with Nordic’s principal IC scientist Carsten Wulff

* Carsten’s background and interest in analog circuit design * Open-source silicon and its benefits vs. challenges * Analog design tools evolution * Obstacles that hinder wider adoption of open-source silicon tools * Advice on approaching an analog design journey

February 14, 202424 min

Chips in days with Minimal Fab - An interview with Leo Moser

Talking about the minimal fab with Leo Moser. Leo recently won a competition run by minimal fab and had a design fabricated.He's published a few blog posts about it here:About the Minimal Fab: https://mole99.uber.space/2023/Minimal_Fab/About%20Minimal%20Fab%20and%20the%20ICPS%20PDK.html NAND tutorial: https://mole99.uber.space/2024/NAND_tutorial/Design%20of%20a%20NAND%20gate%20using%20the%20ICPS%20PDK.html

January 24, 202434 min

An interview with Ed Conway - Silicon Supply Chains

Follow Ed here: https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky Buy his book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo... Sign up to my newsletter here: https://www.zerotoasiccourse.com/news...

September 5, 20234 min

September open source silicon news update - Tiny Tapeout, Conferences, Silicon bringup & more!

00:00 Intro 00:10 TT boards 00:51 TT04 closes on Friday 8th 01:09 ORConf https://orconf.org/ 01:21 Wuthering Bytes 01:53 FSiC videos released https://peertube.f-si.org/video-chann... 02:04 Hackaday Supercon 2023 02:19 YUG2 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yosysh... 02:36 Silicon news - MPW3 and 2206 03:37 IHP workshop videos    • Introduction FMD-QNC project status a...   04:04 IHP cleanroom video footage