A Brief History
The MOSIS Service has been conducting an educational program since 1986.
From 1986 to 1994, this program was jointly funded by DARPA and NSF. In 1994, the DARPA funding for MOSIS and for the educational program ended.
From 1994 until 1998 the educational program was funded jointly by NSF and MOSIS. When the NSF funding ended in 1998, additional funding was obtained from the SIA/SRC and some industrial firms to supplement the MOSIS contribution. This additional funding ended in 2000.
Since 2000, the funding for the educational program has been provided by MOSIS.
In an attempt to aid educational institutions in the development of instructional and research programs in integrated circuits within their engineering departments, MOSIS initiated the MOSIS Educational Program (MEP). The MEP included an instructional component for support of scheduled classes in VLSI design to give students a chance to experience the full cycle of VLSI design, fabrication, and testing of an integrated circuit, and; a research component to support unfunded research conducted by graduate students and faculty who needed to develop critical mass in their areas of research in order to attract funding for future research. Both of these MEP components were offered at no cost to the universities, with minimal restrictions based on available MOSIS supported technologies and fabrication scheduling.
The MOSIS Service does not receive funding from NSF or any other government agency. MOSIS sole source of revenue is derived from its commercial operations.