ChipIgnite by Efabless: Democratizing Chip Creation for Arduino

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Program includes a pre-designed carrier chip and automated open source design flow from Efabless
SkyWater’s open source SKY130 process is the first node to be used to fabricate chips for the program
Initiative removes access barriers by significantly reducing cost and the need for deep semiconductor experience to design chips

Efabless, a community chip creation platform, today announced the launch of its new chipIgnite program to bring chip design and fabrication to the masses and collaboration with SkyWater Technology for the first node supported in the program. The chipIgnite program expands upon the SKY130-based open-source chip manufacturing program sponsored by Google and supports private commercial designs that include non-open source IP. This initiative represents another step forward in the industry to broaden access to chip design by giving people the ability to more easily create and fabricate chips.

The chipIgnite program offers unique value to the designer which includes not only low-cost manufacturing but also a development board and firmware stack to simplify design validation and test. All projects created as part of the chipIgnite program will utilize a full chip reference design template that implements the physical IO for the chip as well as provides a common management area to support the test and evaluation of the user’s design. The program also includes an optional automated open-source design flow for implementing projects that enable users to generate layouts for their digital projects from RTL. The chipIgnite program will provide users a guaranteed reservation to ensure their project is included.

SkyWater’s open-source 130 nm CMOS platform will be used to fabricate chips for the chipIgnite program. The automotive-grade mixed-signal platform is well suited for IoT and edge computing as it is in a sweet spot for enabling a combination of both digital and analog circuit performance with embedded non-volatile memory for a wide range of SoC architectures. The program provides users 10 mm² of the total project area with fabrication for projects using the SkyWater Open Source PDK.

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