The OpenROAD project on lowering ASIC costs and design times(theopenroadproject.org)
theopenroadproject.org
The OpenROAD project on lowering ASIC costs and design times
https://theopenroadproject.org/
5 comments
This seems to be mostly an umbrella effort, focusing (according to their home page) on the "RTL to GDSII" part of EDA. To the extent that they're successful, it would be quite complementary with other efforts in open hardware design, focusing on generating RTL from very-high-level, parameterized, quasi-functional hardware descriptions. But I'm a bit skeptical about their overall goals, particularly since one key issue with modern ASIC design is the unwillingness on the part of fabs to openly share critically needed info about their design rules or other proprietary details of their design-related workflow - and there's no way that open-source software alone can resolve this. Of course I do think we can expect a few useful tools to come out of this effort, and maybe that's compelling enough.
Indeed, a fully-open fab is needed. It seems crazy that access to silicon fabrication is limited to a very small number of wealthy businesses.
>. silicon fabrication is limited to a very small number of wealthy businesses.
Doesn't seem so crazy when you realise a fab can cost upwards of $1B
Doesn't seem so crazy when you realise a fab can cost upwards of $1B
sure, but why isn't there a market for older process technologies that presumably would be cheaper to run?
I came here for exactly this question. An analog-centric fab with 8” wafer technology, perhaps $1B for a greenfield setup. A state of the art 12” wafer logic factory? Think $5B. Not sure about DRAM fabs but probably comparable.
See their GitHub repositories: https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project
At first I was very confused what this had to do with the 4GL RAD language that been around since the early 90's. Seems like a poor choice of name for your project.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenROAD
I see no code repo, no IRC/discord channel, etc.
Either this project is just a pipe dream of it isn't as open as its name implies.
Either this project is just a pipe dream of it isn't as open as its name implies.