[Daniel Valuch] shared a enjoyment and record-location conference badge story (Slovak, translated) with us. He was a person of the organizers for the “ZENIT in electronics” celebration, which is an yearly Slovakian nationwide level of competition for learners. In the course of the competition, students are assigned a letter+selection code for the objective of outcome submission anonymity, and organizers are generally on the lookout for a entertaining way to assign these codes – this time, they did it with customized silicon!
It just so took place that [Peter], one particular of [Daniel]’s colleagues, was at the time doing work for onsemi who ended up accomplishing a tapeout and had some free of charge place on their take a look at chips. Of training course, they didn’t have to imagine 2 times. When it was a student’s flip to draw their identification amount, as an alternative of a slip of paper, they been given a SOIC-16 package with custom silicon bonded to it. Then, they experienced to solder it to their levels of competition badge – which was, of training course, a PCB. Every single chip was independently laser-trimmed to have the student’s variety, and that selection could then be decoded employing a multimeter – or a reasonably sharp eye.
There’s way a lot more to this opposition story than just the badge, but the tailor made silicon element of it confident caught our eyes. Who is familiar with, probably subsequent yr stars will align yet again and we’ll see customized silicon on one particular of the hacker meeting badges. Immediately after all, points have been advancing quickly on that entrance – for occasion, due to the fact Skywater PDK project’s inception in 2020, there’s been several thriving operates already, and if you’d like to study much more, you could look at the HackChat we have experienced this calendar year, and this Remoticon 2020 workshop!