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

Xueyan Zhao announced that #ICSprout is expected to open a 55nm PDK in July 2025:

* ICSprout is jointly established by Zhejiang Provincial Government and Zhejiang University
* It has 12-inch CMOS 180/55nm process lines
* First test chip on ICSprout 55nm Open PDK taped-out in June 15 2025
* Price range: 1400$ - 5600$/mm2

For more information see slide 16 of https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php?title=Making_Open_Silicon_Design_Everywhere:_Using_Cloud-based_Open_Agile_EDA_Platform

#OpenHardware #FSiC #Silicon #FOSS #NGIZero #IHP

The 2025 Free Silicon Conference is over. Slides are online, videos will follow.

Highlights:
* China to open a 55nm PDK in weeks
* ChipsJU DET call is open
* DE:SIGN + Taiwan partnership (submit pre-proposals by 1 October)
* Progress on parasitic extraction
* Former CTO of #CST Studio (Peter Thoma) spoke at FSiC
* ElemRV: Open-source microcontroller taped in IHP130
* Visualization of chips in action: https://znah.net/tt09/

#FSiC #Silicon #FOSS #NGIZero #IHP

FSiC2025 is fully booked.

120+ engineers, hackers, and researchers will gather in Frankfurt an der Oder to discuss libre EDA, PDKs, on-going projects and more.

Check the program at:
https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php/FSiC2025

Video recordings will be published after the conference.

#openHardware #semiconductor #silicon #freeSilicon #FOSS #NGIZero

For example, permissive licences would allow big-EDA to "steal" the best open-source projects and to sell their programs without releasing the source.

Some popular permissive licences, moreover, don't contain any "patent clause" making them dangerous in the chip/hardware context: Tracking which IP went in which chip is relatively simple, and replacing a certain IP once a chip is fabricated is impossible. Without a "patent clause" developers could be easily threatened for patent infringement. 

This EU call refers to the following roadmap which was coordinated by the FOSSi foundation, an entity which received money from Google and big-EDA:
https://fossi-foundation.org/resources/eu-roadmap

The call says that "this roadmap should be considered in proposals".

This roadmap recommends "OSI-approved licences" (ignoring the #FSF) and hints to a "permissive development model".
We strongly disagree with promoting permissive licences in all situations because they may enable unsustainable exploitation scenarios: