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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 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.