Open silicon specialist OnChip has promised to launch a call for participation in its Itsy-Chipsy low-cost semiconductor manufacturing facility, and is already receiving interesting suggestions from potential users.

Announced back in April, Itsy-Chipsy aims to allow smaller companies and hobbyists to produce application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for as little as $100 by providing a chip platform with utility blocks placed on a chip to service custom blocks designed by the platform’s users – the equivalent, the company explains, of popular low-cost PCB manufacturing facility OSH Park for silicon.

Now, the company is seeking potential projects to test the platform – and has already received interest in producing a small but fully free and open source implementation of a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), which it describes as “doable” on Itsy-Chipsy’s current incarnation.

The company has also released a project update via its Hackaday.io page, detailing a visit to semiconductor facilities in Taiwan to resolve the potential issues of “non-disclosure agreement (NDA) aggregation” in which every maker contributing a design to be produced will need to sign an NDA – something the company claims it may have resolved through the adoption of a “more relaxed NDA,” at least for digital blocks.

OnChip has yet to announce a go-live date for its public Itsy-Chipsy tests.