My Dream Job

[JoannaK]

Besides Jeri Ellsworth, the one non-typical background IC designer I can think of is Charles H Moore, the inventor of the FORTH language.
In the 90's he went on a bit of mission to create a special visual Forth, OKAD that was intended as an ultra minimalist chip layout tool. I thought he was going a bit kooky myself. If I recall correctly his IC design house did have some success in selling stack/forth machine cores.
 

Third one that I know is Chip Gracey, he designed Propeller I chip mostly on his own. At the moment he (and some ppl at Parallax) are workin on Propeller II ...
http://forums.parallax.com/forumdisplay.php/97-Propeller-2-Multicore

[Shenandoah]

Now after reading many job posts asking for PhD's in EE I'm thinking of making my own IC fabrication company. What tools and equipment I need for the factory? I will start a very basic one, no need for mass production, minimal equipment needed please??? Where can I buy them? What budget we talking about here?

Thanks for you help and advice.

[dr.diesel]

What happened to your dream of design?

Starting a foundry is an entirely different animal, several orders of magnitude higher.

[jancumps]

... What budget we talking about here?
...

From wikipedia

Fabs require many expensive devices to function. Estimates put the cost of building a new fab over one billion U.S. dollars with values as high as $3–4 billion not being uncommon. TSMC will be investing 9.3 billion dollars in its Fab15 300 mm wafer manufacturing facility in Taiwan to be operational in 2012.[

..

 Prices for most common pieces of equipment for the processing of 300 mm wafers range from $700,000 to upwards of $4,000,000 each with a few pieces of equipment reaching as high as $50,000,000 each (e.g. steppers). A typical fab will have several hundred equipment items.

[free_electron]

you need one of your feet, a loaded gun and a modicum of aim to shoot the aforementioned appendage...

you are nuts.

[c4757p]

Oh, go easy on him. I had big dreams when I was twelve, too.

[EEVblog]

Now after reading many job posts asking for PhD's in EE I'm thinking of making my own IC fabrication company. What tools and equipment I need for the factory? I will start a very basic one, no need for mass production, minimal equipment needed please??? Where can I buy them? What budget we talking about here?

Seriously, this is not achievable, forget it.
If you spend a lot of time and trial and error at it, you just might be able to produce your own working transistor. Yes, one transistor. And not even close to being as good as one you buy for a few cents.
Maybe an "IC" with a dozen or two transistors if you are really determined.

[AlfBaz]

I may be providing him with an out here but I thought he just forgot to add a smiley/winky emoticon at the end of the post