Google Silicon Initiative

Last updated

The Google Open Silicon Initiative is an initiative launched by the Google Hardware Toolchains team to democratize access to custom silicon design. Google has partnered with SkyWater Technology and GlobalFoundries to open-source their Process Design Kits for 180nm, 130nm and 90nm process. [1] [2] This initiative provides free software tools for chip designers to create, verify and test virtual chip circuit designs before they are physically produced in factories. [3] [4] [5] [6] The aim of the initiative is to reduce the cost of chip designs and production, which will benefit DIY enthusiasts, researchers, universities, and chip startups. The program has gained more partners, including the US Department of Defense, which injected $15 million in funding to SkyWater, one of the manufacturers supporting the program. [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Application-specific integrated circuit</span> Integrated circuit customized for a specific task

An application-specific integrated circuit is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficiency video codec. Application-specific standard product chips are intermediate between ASICs and industry standard integrated circuits like the 7400 series or the 4000 series. ASIC chips are typically fabricated using metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) technology, as MOS integrated circuit chips.

OpenRISC is a project to develop a series of open-source hardware based central processing units (CPUs) on established reduced instruction set computer (RISC) principles. It includes an instruction set architecture (ISA) using an open-source license. It is the original flagship project of the OpenCores community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open-design movement</span> Movement for product development with publicly shared designs

The open-design movement involves the development of physical products, machines and systems through use of publicly shared design information. This includes the making of both free and open-source software (FOSS) as well as open-source hardware. The process is generally facilitated by the Internet and often performed without monetary compensation. The goals and philosophy of the movement are identical to that of the open-source movement, but are implemented for the development of physical products rather than software. Open design is a form of co-creation, where the final product is designed by the users, rather than an external stakeholder such as a private company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open-source hardware</span> Hardware from the open-design movement

Open-source hardware (OSH) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and apply a like concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as FOSH. The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned so that others can make it – coupling it closely to the maker movement. Hardware design, in addition to the software that drives the hardware, are all released under free/libre terms. The original sharer gains feedback and potentially improvements on the design from the FOSH community. There is now significant evidence that such sharing can drive a high return on investment for the scientific community.

In electronic design, a semiconductor intellectual property core, IP core, or IP block is a reusable unit of logic, cell, or integrated circuit layout design that is the intellectual property of one party. IP cores can be licensed to another party or owned and used by a single party. The term comes from the licensing of the patent or source code copyright that exists in the design. Designers of system on chip (SoC), application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) and systems of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) logic can use IP cores as building blocks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Integrated circuit design</span> Engineering process for electronic hardware

Integrated circuit design, or IC design, is a sub-field of electronics engineering, encompassing the particular logic and circuit design techniques required to design integrated circuits, or ICs. ICs consist of miniaturized electronic components built into an electrical network on a monolithic semiconductor substrate by photolithography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multi-project wafer service</span>

Multi-project chip (MPC), and multi-project wafer (MPW) semiconductor manufacturing arrangements allow customers to share mask and microelectronics wafer fabrication cost between several designs or projects.

The 180 nm process is a MOSFET (CMOS) semiconductor process technology that was commercialized around the 1998–2000 timeframe by leading semiconductor companies, starting with TSMC and Fujitsu, then followed by Sony, Toshiba, Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments and IBM.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linux Foundation</span> Non-profit technology consortium to develop the Linux operating system

The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit technology consortium that hosts and promotes the collaborative development of open-source software projects. In addition to providing a neutral home where Linux kernel development can be protected and accelerated, the LF is dedicated to building sustainable ecosystems around open-source projects to accelerate technology development and commercial adoption.


GlobalFoundries Inc. (GF) is a multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company incorporated in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Malta, New York. Created by the divestiture of the manufacturing arm of AMD, the company was privately owned by Mubadala Investment Company, the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates, until an initial public offering (IPO) in October 2021.

This page is a comparison of electronic design automation (EDA) software which is used today to design the near totality of electronic devices. Modern electronic devices are too complex to be designed without the help of a computer. Electronic devices may consist of integrated circuits (ICs), printed circuit boards (PCBs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) or a combination of them. Integrated circuits may consist of a combination of digital and analog circuits. These circuits can contain a combination of transistors, resistors, capacitors or specialized components such as analog neural networks, antennas or fuses.

The OpenPOWER Foundation is a collaboration around Power ISA-based products initiated by IBM and announced as the "OpenPOWER Consortium" on August 6, 2013. IBM is opening up technology surrounding their Power Architecture offerings, such as processor specifications, firmware and software with a liberal license, and will be using a collaborative development model with their partners.

lowRISC C.I.C. is a not-for-profit company headquartered in Cambridge, UK. It uses collaborative engineering to develop and maintain open source silicon designs and tools. lowRISC is active in RISC-V-related open source hardware and software development and stewards the OpenTitan project.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rigetti Computing</span> American quantum computing company

Rigetti Computing, Inc. is a Berkeley, California-based developer of quantum integrated circuits used for quantum computers. The company also develops a cloud platform called Forest that enables programmers to write quantum algorithms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open-source ventilator</span> Ventilator of freely-licensed design

An open-source ventilator is a disaster-situation ventilator made using a freely licensed (open-source) design, and ideally, freely available components and parts. Designs, components, and parts may be anywhere from completely reverse-engineered or completely new creations, components may be adaptations of various inexpensive existing products, and special hard-to-find and/or expensive parts may be 3D-printed instead of purchased. As of early 2020, the levels of documentation and testing of open-source ventilators was well below scientific and medical-grade standards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Asahi Linux</span> Linux distribution for Apple CPUs

Asahi Linux is a project that ports the Linux kernel and related software to Apple silicon-powered Macs. The software design project was started and is led by Hector Martin. Work began in early 2021, a few months after Apple formally announced the transition to Apple silicon. An initial alpha release followed in 2022. The project has been made challenging by the lack of publicly available documentation of Apple's proprietary firmware.

SkyWater Technology is an American semiconductor engineering and fabrication foundry, based in Bloomington, Minnesota. It is the only US-owned pure-play silicon foundry.

Libre-SOC is a libre soft processor core originally written by Luke Leighton and other contributors, announced at the OpenPOWER Summit NA 2020. It adheres to the Power ISA 3.0 instruction set and can be run on FPGA boards, currently booting MicroPython and other bare-metal applications.

References

  1. Euphrosine, Johan; Mahintorabi, Ethan (2022-11-11). "GlobalFoundries joins Google's open source silicon initiative". opensource.googleblog.com. Retrieved 2023-05-05.
  2. "Google's Open Silicon Efforts Grow with a New Open Source 180nm PDK from GlobalFoundries". Hackster.io. Retrieved 2023-05-05.
  3. "Build Open Silicon with Google". Google Open Source Blog. Retrieved 2023-05-05.
  4. Gowran, Leigh Mc (2022-08-09). "Google expands its open-source chip initiative with new partnership". Silicon Republic. Retrieved 2023-05-05.
  5. "Google Launches New Silicon Design Portal For Open-Source Projects". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 2023-05-05.
  6. "Open-source hardware: a growing movement to democratize IC design". Electrical and Computer Engineering. Retrieved 2023-05-05.
  7. Shah, Agam (2022-08-05). "Google Puts Open Source in Chip Design and Manufacturing". The New Stack. Retrieved 2023-05-05.