40 Open-Hardware Chips Selected for Production Under the Open MPW Program — and Yours Could Be Next
Efabless, Google, and SkyWater have teamed up to produce open chips at zero cost — and received 45 designs in the project's first month.
The first open source chips to be produced under the Open MPW program, which saw efabless, Google, and SkyWater team up to allow open source hardware developers to produce custom chips at no cost, are under production — and there are a whopping 40 designs in the first batch.
Launched last year, the SkyWater Process Development Kit (PDK) offered open source hardware projects a chance to build actual chips, rather than relying on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), on SkyWater's tried-and-tested though not exactly cutting-edge 130nm node. "Manufacturing chips is expensive," Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation (FOSSi Foundation) director Philipp Wagner wrote at the time, "even for more than a decade old nodes like the 130nm node, you need to spend at least a couple thousand dollars.
"You know what? Don’t worry – Google and efabless have got you covered! They are providing completely free of cost chip manufacturing runs: one in November this year, and multiple more in 2021. All open source chip designs qualify, no further strings attached!"
That promise proved popular: 45 designs were submitted under what is now known as the Open MPW program, 60 percent of which came from first-time chip designers - and 40 have been selected to be produced in the very first batch. "A look at the designs that were taped out shows how diverse the motivation for producing a chip can be," the FOSSi Foundation notes: "Open processor cores, whole systems-on-chip, a cryptocurrency miner, a robotic app processor, an amateur satellite radio transceiver, analog, RF and embedded FPGA projects were all included."
Production of these parts is in place now, with hardware to land with its designers some time in June - at which point a second fabrication round will start, with another planned for December. As with the first, all fabrication runs are carried out free of charge — providing the hardware submitted is available under an open source license for others to use.
More details on the Open MPW program can be found on the SkyWater website, while the FOSSi Foundation has published a blog post and video presentation from efabless co-founder and chief executive Mohamed Kassem as part of its FOSSi Dial-Up program.