Engineering researchers have developed new software, called FreePDK15, to facilitate chip design and are making it freely available in order to foster new research focused on pushing the frontiers of computer technology.
"State-of-the-art transistors are now 15 nanometers (nm) long, and you can fit a billion of those transistors on a single chip," says Rhett Davis, an electrical and computer engineering researcher at NC State. "That means we need software to design those chips and ours is the first free software that enables that level of chip design. There are no confidentiality agreements to hold researchers back and no strings attached, since one of our goals is to bring more people into the chip design field."
Davis launched the FreePDK project and oversaw development of the software by a team of students and private sector volunteers with the support of fellow NC State researcher Paul Franzon.
The FreePDK15 software gives chip designers accurate rules and definitions for what optical lithography can (and can't) do on the 15 nm scale. Optical lithography is the technology used to print transistor designs on a chip.
"Basically, the software allows designers free rein to explore new ideas, while keeping them within the bounds of what is physically possible," Davis explains.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 14 2014, @05:10PM
> you can fit a billion of those transistors on a single chip
That's so last decade.
A mid-size 20nm FPGA has over 4 Billion transistors. The biggest ones should top 40 Billion.
/TMYK
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Thursday August 14 2014, @05:26PM
I've been looking for something like this for a while now. (dons sunglasses) Let's rock!
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 14 2014, @05:56PM
Sure you have...
Gotten tired of cutting Rubylyth with an Exacto knife?
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday August 15 2014, @04:05PM
I gather you never heard of electric [staticfreesoft.com] then?
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Friday August 15 2014, @04:11PM
I have, actually. It's pretty nice. The only unfortunate thing is that it doesn't seem to be able (may just be the version in the ubuntu repos) to handle verilog OR VHDL without throwing errors.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday August 14 2014, @06:02PM
Then what? Is there a way for a budding chip designer to actually get a copy of their chip produced?
(Score: 2) by emg on Thursday August 14 2014, @06:27PM
Sure. You just give a few million dollars to a chip fab, and they'll run off a few wafers for you.
If I remember correctly, when I was working for a company that designed their own chips about ten years ago, the masks alone cost a million or more.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday August 14 2014, @07:59PM
That's a one-time cost though. If you made a good design and mean to sell it at some scale, I'm sure the unit cost is more reasonable.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by randmcnatt on Thursday August 14 2014, @07:09PM
The Wright brothers were not the first to fly: they were the first to land.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TK on Thursday August 14 2014, @08:05PM
Is there a free simulation software to predict performance of these chips? It's all well and good to be able to design your own, but if you can't compare your design's performance against Intel's latest and greatest, or the side projects of your rival hobbyists, how can you get beyond a design to an actual physical chip?
Disclaimer: I do not have a (electronic) hardware design background, so I don't know what goes into these things.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday August 14 2014, @08:16PM
You do make a good point. Without a virtual electronic or thermal performance test, it'd be mighty expensive for a hobbyist to constantly ask fabs to do runoffs for him to check for bugs and related issues.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by TK on Thursday August 14 2014, @08:47PM
Agilent has a thermal simulation package [keysight.com] that's available as a 30-day free trial. The simulation software definitely exists, but it's expensive enough that no one is putting the sticker price on their websites.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 16 2014, @07:23PM
Don't say ambiguous things like "freely available".