Chips,
anywhere.
Wherever you are in the world, design a chip with your own hands and have it made close to home. We're a gathering that wants to pull that future closer — and have fun doing it. Think of us less as a company, and more as an experiment: "Can this really be done? Let's find out."
Chips are a staple food for all of society.
Semiconductors have long been called "the rice of industry." But these days it's not just industry. Your phone, your car, the power grid, even farming — all of it runs on chips. If that's true, then chips are a staple food for society as a whole.
What matters most about a staple is local production for local consumption. Rice may be a different variety in every region, but it's grown where it's eaten. Just as farming is a matter of security for every country, chips too should really be made in each country, at each site, to meet what's needed there. Do that, and you can build all sorts of things around the needs of the place.
"That's impossible," people kept saying. But watching 3D printers spread, I started to think otherwise. A little before that it was the desktop printer; earlier still, silkscreen printing and the mimeograph. Printing teaching materials at a school, printing what you need at home — that flow holds boundless possibility. A world where what a place needs can be made in that place. Isn't that something like magic?
The same thing could happen with chips. If the story we've been telling over at tech-scout.org 🔗 holds up, then a student in any country could design at their own site and order from PCB shops and shuttle services around the world. And maskless equipment will surely keep improving, while research into whether a 3D printer could make a circuit board has already begun.
So Maginore wants to be a champion of chip "rice-farming." So that wherever you are on this planet, you can make your own chips. We're launching with that wish.
To say "it can be done," we made it first.
Talk is easy. So first we turned the whole path of one person taking on chips at their own bench into open courses — from a plain-language read on the wider world, to actually designing a board and ordering it, to building what's inside the silicon. It's all readable at tech-scout.org.
The Cambrian Explosion of Chips
No prior knowledge, no code — a read on the upheaval happening in the semiconductor world right now. Start by seeing how wide the world is.
Read it → BasicsHow a CPU Works
What's behind an instruction set, told through a kitchen metaphor. What it really means for a chip to "compute," from the ground up.
Read it → Hands-onGetting Started with KiCad
Build a minimal CH32V003 board with your own hands. Go once around board-making, from schematic to placing an order.
Read it → AppliedAutomating PCBs with Code
Write the connections in code, hand routing to automation, finish the key spots by hand. Share board-making with the machine, one step further.
Read it → LogicGetting Started with FPGA
Hardware you can rewrite like software. Build a logic circuit yourself and make it run.
Read it → SiliconGetting Started with LibreLane
Turn a logic circuit into manufacturing data with open EDA. Finally reach into the process of making what's inside the silicon.
Read it → PracticeBuild-Your-Own RISC-V SoC
A RISC-V SoC on real FPGA hardware. "Ideas by humans, implementation by AI, judgment by physics" — step by step, toward the real thing.
Read it → GatewayThe way in
Not sure where to start? Begin at the gateway. From reading to practice, you can see the whole map.
Open the gate →We'll be honest about our wishes, too.
We can't promise anything yet. But here's what we'd love to see, laid out plainly. The more people who join in the fun, the closer the far-fetched gets to real.
Chip courses, all over the world
For students and engineers in any country. Take the courses we've built at tech-scout further and wider — in many more languages.
Around 20 hubs, across the continents
Say, 20 spots around the planet to start. It'd be lovely to have design centers, or homegrown PCB and shuttle services, on each continent.
Research the know-how, and share it
The tricks of making chips on-site — researched together, shared with everyone. Keeping it to yourself is no fun anyway.
Someday, a maskless machine
This is the big dream. To develop, ourselves, a machine that draws without carving a stamp (a mask). And the apps that go with it.
Still just before gathering the crew.
Maginore isn't a company that takes on jobs (not yet, anyway). Right now, we're at the "who's in?" stage. People who'll enjoy a wild idea like "chips, made locally" with us. Students who want to get their hands dirty, engineers, teachers — and people who just thought "sounds interesting." Across the world's roughly 200 countries, there are surely people who belong here. This planet is our stage.
For now, take a look at the courses on tech-scout.org. Almost everything we're trying to do is right there.
What's in the name.
Magi is magic. Not long ago, a chip being born right where you stand sounded like magic. We mean to pull that magic close, for real.
nore layers several meanings — we've left it open on purpose. There's Noah's ark, carrying know-how and companions to places they haven't yet reached. And there's the core that sprouts in each place. The spelling, and the meaning, aren't pinned to just one.
Maginore aims to be less a profit-seeking company and more a gathering — closer to social awareness-raising, a social business, an inclusive business. This isn't about credit for any one person. It's a bit of quiet seed-sowing, so that people at each site, all over the world, become the leads in their own story.