Free Silicon Foundation @fsi@mastodon.f-si.org

What are the limitations of existing free and open-source (FOS) electronic design automation (#EDA) tools?

What is it missing to design a chip with 1+ Million gates?

Which will be the first foundry to open a process design kit (PDKs)?

These are some of the questions that will be addressed at the third Free Silicon Conference (#FSiC2020) which will be held in Zurich on June 4-6 2020.

More info at:
https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php/FSiC2020

Picture: the Raven chip of Tim Edwards
https://peertube.f-si.org/videos/watch/e8404429-4d32-4741-ac11-1beb0f16348e

#KiCad joins the Linux Foundation to advance electronic design automation

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press-release/2019/11/kicad-joins-linux-foundation-to-advance-electronic-design-automation/

The European Commission is organizing a "Workshop about the future of Open Source Software and Open Source Hardware", Brussels, November 14-15 2019:

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/workshop-about-future-open-source-software-and-open-source-hardware

Online registration will close on November 6.

Is it possible to simulate transistors using open-source tools only?

How fast are the available solvers?

How hard is it to interface with existing PDKs?

The following talks provide very promising answers:

* ngspice - an open source mixed signal circuit simulator, by Holger Vogt
https://peertube.f-si.org/videos/watch/62e7ad36-e7fc-4884-971a-9fcedf17d9f2

* Gnu Circuit Analysis Package (GnuCap), by Al Davis
https://peertube.f-si.org/videos/watch/5cae10a1-c5c6-45d3-9ade-949c0d3a2062

* Converting 45nm transistor netlists to open standards, by Thomas Benz
https://peertube.f-si.org/videos/watch/40e29b80-8a91-445c-b3cc-1fb886d7d51b

Which foundries are the most friendly to open-source? Is there an open-source #PDK?

Kholdoun Torki of Circuits-Multi-Projects (https://mycmp.fr/) provided a great overview:

"Towards Foundry PDKs on Free CAD Tools"
https://peertube.f-si.org/videos/watch/db22ddc7-85cf-4356-bc46-af90e3f72fd6

All the recordings of the Free Silicon Conference are now online:

https://peertube.f-si.org/video-channels/fsic2019

Day 1 focuses on high-level design. Some of the concepts presented in the first talks can be partially applied to FPGAs as well

Day 2 discusses aspects closer to silicon, such as PDKs, memory generators and layouting

Day 3 presents hands-on tutorials

The full program is available at:
https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php/FSiC2019

#FSiC

The past Free Silicon Conference was opened with a great talk by Todd Weaver from #Purism:

"The Future of Computing and Why You Should Care"

https://peertube.f-si.org/videos/watch/d8dcaf9e-88c7-44cf-9f97-d7d96d1d9b28

We proudly announce to run our own #peertube instance to host the videos of the past Free Silicon Conference 2019:

https://peertube.f-si.org/

#FSiC

Is it possible to design a silicon chip using 100% Free and Open Source (FOS) tools?
Can one publish the layout?
Which impact can be expected?

These are few of the questions that thirty-six speakers will address at the second Free Silicon Conference (#FSiC).

Last chance to attend: reservation deadline is next week (February 21):
https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php/FSiC2019

Cannot join in Paris? No worries! We are preparing the equipment to record all the sessions.

Tomorrow (Sunday February 3) the "CAD and Open Hardware" conference will take place at #FOSDEM (Brussels):

https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/track/cad_and_open_hardware/

Last year's edition (with video-recordings):
https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/cad_and_open_hardware/

Twenty-seven speakers have already confirmed their presence at the Free Silicon Conference (#FSiC):

https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php/FSiC2019#Confirmed_invited_talks

The high-level design session will include speakers from:

1. Gaut (http://www.gaut.fr/)
2. GHDL (http://ghdl.free.fr/)
3. SpinalHDL (https://github.com/SpinalHDL)

Twenty-five speakers have already confirmed their presence at the Free Silicon Conference (#FSiC):

https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php/FSiC2019#Confirmed_invited_talks

The introduction on Day 1 will begin with talks of:

1. Purism (https://puri.sm/)
2. Wiring (http://wiring.org.co/)
3. Echopen (http://www.echopen.org/)

Which impact will the first free and open (layout included) chips have on security, education and cooperative projects?

The 35th Chaos Communication Congress, #35C3, ended few days ago. All talks can be seen at
https://media.ccc.de/c/35c3
and browsed by theme:
https://halfnarp.events.ccc.de/

A small selection about #silicon and place-and-route tools:

LibreSilicon - decentralizing semiconductor manufacturing
https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9410-libresilicon

The nextpnr FOSS FPGA place-and-route tool
https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9612-the_nextpnr_foss_fpga_place-and-route_tool

@mansr

OpenCores is specialized on FPGAs:
https://opencores.org/maintainers/oliscience

However, HDL code alone is not sufficient for silicon. It is just one input for the design loops involving place-and-route, parameter-extraction, timing-analysis, etc.

By creating FOS CAD tools we are bridging the gap between HDL and layouts.

@kmicu

Not all CAD tool vendors publish part or all of their licenses, hence the list below is not exhaustive:
https://www.synopsys.com/verification/prototyping/haps/synopsys-license-agreement.html (section 2.2 comma 3)
http://s3.mentor.com/company/enduser-english.pdf (section 4.1)

Those using such tools should refer to the text of their licenses directly.

Where can you download, modify and share a silicon IP block just like you do, say, with gcc?

Nowhere.

The licenses of mainstream proprietary silicon CAD tools explicitly forbid publishing anything created with them. This is partially due to keep algorithms, such as place-and-route, more secret.

It is like writing a book with a proprietary word processor and then not having permission to publish it for not revealing how the grammar checker works.

Free silicon requires free CAD tools.

@balu

Totally agree.

In HiFive/SiFive just a small portion of the source/documentation is open, and it is not free (no copyleft license). Nor are the tools to generate the layout.

We want to change that - see the conference program: https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php/FSiC2019

@stman @maiki

Merci!

We will soon put on the wiki the answers to your question and to the many more we are receiving.

@bobstechsite @codesections @fsfe

Our logo is probably more similar to the one of the fsf than to the one of the fsfe.

We are not affiliated with any entity, but we are certainly aligned with both fsf and fsfe and we had personal discussions with both.

We know fossi as well.

@ente@chaos.social @phryk

Thanks for the suggestion. In case of need we'll come back to you. For now we have several other logistic aspects to focus on first.