IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Fall 2021 - 123

I
Democratizing IC Design: The Story of a New Movement
and the Launch of the SSCS PICO Program
In recent decades, the software community
has greatly benefited from
open source tools and code. It has
embraced a highly productive culture
of sharing and open collaboration
that resonates with the spirit of
our times. We live in an age of global
connectivity, where files are shared
in real time and a video hackathon
between two teams on opposite sides
of the planet can be organized on a
whim. This environment is particularly
attractive for youngsters in the
technology space, drawing many of
them into computer science.
Paradoxically, the semiconductor
community, which has enabled global
connectivity through disruptive hardware
advancements, has so far not
embraced the benefits of open collaboration.
A key issue is that access
to manufacturable IC technology is
usually governed by nondisclosure
agreements, which even limits collaboration
within closed entities.
This article reviews exciting new
developments that have carved out a
subspace in the semiconductor ecosystem
where sharing and open innovation
can begin to flourish. We describe the
rise and the underpinnings of this new
open source ecosystem and speculate
on where it may lead us. We then discuss
the new IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society
(SSCS) Platform for IC Design Outreach
(PICO), which aims to leverage the open
source movement for building new communities
in IC design. Finally, we showcase
four open source chip designs that
were sponsored by the SSCS PICO program
for tape-out in June 2021.
Why Is Open Source IC Design
Potentially Transformative?
The cover flap to Eric Raymond's
book The Cathedral & the Bazaar [1]
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSSC.2021.3111376
Date of current version: 17 November 2021
notes that the key to the success of
open source in software is that " it
depends on the ability of programmers
to freely share their program
code so that others can improve on
it. " Bob Young, founder of Red Hat,
notes in the foreword of the same
book that open source succeeds
because " it gives customers control
over the technologies they use,
instead of enabling the vendors to
control their customers through
restricting access to the code behind
the technologies. "
A key take-away is that long-term
community collaboration, if openly
facilitated, leads to intellectual outcomes
that surpass those of the individual
or even small teams. In addition,
there is the increased number of possible
innovative solutions arising in
parallel. It has also been widely proven
that collaboration, especially if done
across domains, sparks innovative
solutions to problems that would otherwise
stay unsolved when looked at
through a one-discipline lens. This
includes collaboration with potential
customers.
To achieve such openness in the
semiconductor industry, we must
look at all of the puzzle pieces that
are needed to design a chip. To name
a few, they include multidomain
design know-how, electronic design
automation (EDA) tools, the process
design kit (PDK), and affordable manufacturing
and testing options.
Last year, SkyWater Technology
released the first open source PDK
(SKY130). For the first time in the
history of the semiconductor industry,
it is now possible to design,
verify, and manufacture systems
on chip (SoCs) that have been completely
developed using an open
source PDK, open source building
blocks, and a variety of open source
and proprietary EDA tools.
An open source PDK enables the
broadest possible collaboration on any
given design or across designs. That, in
turn, increases the number of potential
designers, which reduces the cost per
design and makes it affordable. In a
traditional model, teams are limited
by the number of participants with
a license. In an open PDK model, the
" team " becomes a much larger global
community with the obvious benefits
of quality, creativity, and productivity
of designs. In a simple example, with
an open source PDK, you can open the
details of a design to a broad pool of
contributors for tasks like physical
design, verification, and design
methodologies. More powerfully, you
have a compounding benefit as others
add to a design over time without
having to replicate the work or have a
license for the PDK.
To objectively understand the
potential impact on the chip design
world, one should assume that it will
happen and become the new normal.
Designers will share their work with
sufficient information to allow others-anywhere-to
use it, learn from
it, and improve it. Similar to what happened
in the software or embedded
hardware world, there will be individuals
and companies who use the open
source content to design and deliver
solutions using custom chips for their
target customers. In addition, more
universities will have access to reallife
learning resources to propel the
breadth and depth of engineering
knowledge to upcoming generations.
The Launch of the
SSCS PICO Program
Inspired by the new movement toward
open collaboration in IC design, the
SSCS launched its new PICO program
in the summer of 2021. With this program,
the SSCS intends to build new
international communities that share
IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE
FALL 2021
123
IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Fall 2021

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