Google is expanding its open-source chip design and manufacturing effort to give a boost to the community of developers building custom silicon while supporting a thriving ecosystem around open-source hardware.
The Silicon Valley giant said that it is partnering with U.S. contract chip maker GlobalFoundries to roll out a new open-source process design kit (PDK) based on the foundry's 180MCU node. Google also announced a program for semiconductor engineers to get chips produced at no cost using a platform from efabless.
GlobalFoundries joining forces with Google “is an unambiguous affirmation of the viability of the open source model for the foundry ecosystem," the company said in a statement.
The open-source PDK is the first result of Google’s ongoing collaboration with Malta, New York-based GlobalFoundries.
A PDK is a set of files that a foundry shares with its customers to describe the building blocks of a specific production process. The PDK interfaces with electronic-design automation (EDA) software and covers the rules chip engineers have to meet during the design process. Engineers use a PDK to design, simulate, and verify a chip design before sharing the blueprint with the foundry to build prototypes or ramp up production.
Designing a chip is a very expensive process, and high-end electronic design automation (EDA) software is also expensive to buy. Having test chips manufactured by a foundry can cost tens of thousands or millions of dollars per production run. This is a major obstacle to startups or systems companies that want to invest more in chip design. But the use of open-source chip design tools, including PDKs, could help ease the costs.
Google said it started its open-source chip design and manufacturing program called "OpenMFW" in 2020. It previously partnered with SkyWater Technology to support the open-source chip design on its 130-nm node.
Google said it has funded several wafer production runs as part of the program. To date, around 240 chips based on the open-source 130-nm PDK have been manufactured at Google’s expense.
The companies said last month that they are expanding the program to include an open-source chip design platform powered by Google for Skywater’s 90-nm FDSOI node. The Department of Defense is contributing funding.
But Google is expanding the scope of the open-source foundry program by partnering with Global-Foundries, the world’s second-largest pure-play foundry behind TSMC, according to TrendForce, a market research firm.
Specifically, the global production capacity for chips such as general-purpose microcontrollers (MCUs), power management ICs (PMICs), and motor controller ICs based on the 180-nm node amounted to more than 16 million wafers last year. According to Google, that figure will climb to more than 22 million by 2026.
“Based on the scale and breadth of GF’s technology and manufacturing expertise, we expect to do more together to further access and innovation in semiconductor development and manufacturing,” Google said.
Learn more about the program here.