First Google-Sponsored MPW Shuttle Launched at SkyWater with 40 Open Source Community Submitted Designs

Collaboration amongst SkyWater, Efabless and Google permits trade’s first open supply ASICs

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. & SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–SkyWater Technology, the trusted expertise realization companion, and Efabless, a crowdsourcing design platform for customized silicon, immediately introduced the primary tapeout in a collection of Google-sponsored open supply multi-project wafer (MPW) shuttles, managed by Efabless and manufactured at SkyWater. On this partnership, open supply designs have been chosen to be fabricated for gratis to designers. The design submission course of was open for 30 days, producing 1700 downloads within the first two weeks and filling all 40 obtainable slots. Extra designs shall be accommodated beginning within the subsequent MPW shuttle run which is anticipated in mid-2021. The designs make the most of SkyWater’s 130nm open course of design package which has been made publicly obtainable.

This system illustrates the potential of making use of open supply to all ranges of IC design to enhance entry to sources reminiscent of design instruments, IP, and foundry course of design kits (PDKs) that may be shared by a bigger pool of people with specialised talent units. To allow wider engagement from the neighborhood, Efabless has developed Caravel, a provider RISC-V primarily based System on Chip that features all of the housekeeping features that help customers’ designs and acts as a normal check harness. This additional reduces limitations to design, prototyping and verification. Each venture proprietor will obtain 4 improvement boards with their design plus further elements for different makes use of.

The Open MPW Shuttle Program attracted designers from each academia and industrial organizations. Roughly 60% of the designs have been submitted by software program, FPGA and {hardware} builders (non-IC consultants) — demonstrating a big untapped underlying curiosity generated by placing IC design within the fingers of customers. By enabling open supply design, this system additionally illustrates the variety and creativity of designs that may very well be generated. Examples of submitted designs embrace:

• OpenPOWER SoC
• 5 RISC-V SoCs
• Crypto-currency Miner
• Robotic App Processor
• Beginner Satellite tv for pc Radio Transceiver
• Analog/RF
• 4 eFPGAs

Generated IP shall be accessible by all open supply designers going ahead on the 130 nm mixed-signal course of (SKY130) at SkyWater. Designers will have the ability to make the most of the Efabless platform to prototype these designs, derivatives of those designs, and new designs that mix the open supply designs with proprietary IP from conventional suppliers.

The SKY130 process, a mixed-signal CMOS expertise, gives many usually optionally available options as commonplace — options just like the native interconnect, SONOS non-volatile reminiscence performance, MiM capacitors and extra. This gives the designer with a variety of flexibility in design decisions. Professors from a number of universities together with Stanford, UC Berkeley, Purdue College, and the American College in Cairo have used the SKY130 course of as a base expertise for tutorial tasks.

John Kent, SkyWater govt vp of expertise improvement and design enablement mentioned, “With design instruments and open supply design IP, engineers from around the globe are collaborating and creating new content material whereas accessing design and fabrication sources in a revolutionary method. Engineers are refining and including content material to the physique of data on a steady foundation. That is each an trade first and a big step ahead in design enablement.”

“We’ve got seen unbelievable neighborhood engagement with virtually 1100 members,” mentioned Mohamed Kassem, Efabless chief expertise officer and co-founder. “On this primary MPW, this venture empowered and enabled dozens of latest designers to deliver their concepts to silicon. This was achieved by specializing in their new designs which have been later built-in in our commonplace harness SoC, Caravel. We simply taped-out the primary shuttle and we’re wanting ahead to silicon validation.”

Concerning the Google-sponsored MPW Shuttle Program

The open supply foundry PDK is accessible at https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk. The window for submitting designs for the subsequent shuttle on this collection is deliberate for mid-2021. Extra particulars in regards to the design submission course of and necessities will be discovered by visiting:

To be taught extra in regards to the SKY130 PDK open supply foundry providing, please go to https://skywater-pdk.slack.com/ or contact swfoundry@skywatertechnology.com.

About Efabless Company

Efabless.com gives a platform and market that makes use of open supply and neighborhood fashions to make the design and commercialization of ICs easy, cheap and accessible to everybody. Efabless accelerates the event of latest merchandise and preliminary proof of ideas by means of a novel answer primarily based on configurable open supply SoC design templates and automatic design technology. Product builders use this answer to quickly, cost-effectively and reliably create customized silicon. Chip builders use the answer to dramatically scale back price and time to marketplace for proof of idea of latest and thrilling ICs. The Efabless mannequin is extendible to superior packaging, software program, subsystems and full methods. Efabless is headquartered in San Jose, California. For extra data, go to www.efabless.com.

About SkyWater Know-how

SkyWater is the one U.S.-owned and U.S.-based pure play semiconductor foundry and is a DOD-accredited Trusted provider, specializing in customized expertise improvement companies, quantity manufacturing, and superior packaging capabilities.

Contacts

Efabless Firm Contact: Jeff DiCorpo | 408.896.2078 | jeffdi@efabless.com
SkyWater Firm Contact: Tara Luther | 952.851.5023 | tara.luther@skywatertechnology.com
SkyWater Media Contact: Lauri Julian | 949.280.5602 | lauri.julian@skywatertechnology.com