a03 Google/SkyWater and the Promise of the Open PDK

Abstract
For over twenty years, silicon foundry Process Design Kits (PDKs) have been a domain of secret knowledge, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), license servers, and password-protected download sites. The lack of transparency is at odds with today’s ever-expanding universe of open source software, leading to an unusual niche for licensed commercial tools, and a very difficult space in which to explore, grow, and diversify. To overcome the problems inherent in this arrangement, the SkyWater foundry has opened up its process description to the public, a process driven and underwritten by Google and supported by efabless and a consortium of small companies and university groups. This talk highlights the implications of having a free and publicly-accessible foundry process description on the small world of open source electronic design automation (EDA) tools for custom silicon design, how the open source PDK repository is beneficial to the worldwide chip design community, how developers of open-source EDA tools can take advantage of it, and where to move forward in a future of open-source tools and hardware.

Author
Tim Edwards [email protected] (Open Circuit Design, efabless.com)