skywater-pdk
isc0901b0-breakout
skywater-pdk | isc0901b0-breakout | |
---|---|---|
27 | 2 | |
2,841 | 9 | |
1.0% | - | |
2.3 | 10.0 | |
8 months ago | over 2 years ago | |
Python | HTML | |
Apache License 2.0 | MIT License |
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
skywater-pdk
-
Ask HN: Open-Source Simple CPU?
Preferably Intel compatible or able to run Linux? Something I can build in my garage or in a simple microprocessor fab.
https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk
-
Libre Silicon – Free semiconductors for everyone
It looks neat, but the process node is 1 um with 3 metal layers.
The open Skywater PDK is 130 nm : https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk (though I don't know how reliable the PDK is?)
-
Ask HN: How to start a fabless chip company targeting a modern process node?
From working in a somewhat related discipline, the PDKs for the high end nodes (think tsmc N16 and lower) are quite hard to obtain and require your org to pass security audit. In addition to that the cadence licenses are priced very much for a big-org rather than a startup.
Does your chip absolutely need a modern node? I'm assuming you've seen the open source skywater pdk, but here it is just in case. https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk
-
Cadence Genus&Innovus
If you need a free PDK, check out: https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk
-
DIY-Thermocam: The Affordable and Easy-to-Build Thermal Camera for Everyone
That would be really neat, but I haven't seen anyone even make a CMOS imager on SKY130.
https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk
One could make an array of thermopiles, like the hacker that made their own imager out of discrete diodes (digiOBSCURA) . But each pixel would cost $7.
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/excelitas-technol...
One might be able to make an array of thermistors (possibly with active cooling using a peltier) like the diycamera (digiOBSCURA) below. Might be an application of combining many RC oscillators in a tree and recovering the signal with an FFT. I have a gut feeling this is possible, but haven't show it.
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/panasonic-electro...
https://github.com/IdleHandsProject/diycamera (digiOBSCURA)
One could experiment with microbolometers on tinytapeout. https://elicit.org/search?q=cmos+microbolometer
https://tinytapeout.com/
-
Riscv board running quake II using a Radeon card.
Unlike x86_64 which can only legally be produced by two and one-quarter companies, RISC-V is a permissively open-sourced ISA so anyone can make a chip. Literally, you can download Verilog of Berkeley Rocket cores from Github and run it on an FPGA, or prep it to send to SkyWater to fab at 130nm.
- NCSU Free 45nmPDK
-
Making open source hardware design a reality
Taping out an actual chip inevitably involves IP that's not yours, e.g. the standard cell library and other 'physical' IP like memories and flash. You cannot open source that as it is not yours and in general the owners of it won't want to open source it either (though there are exceptions e.g. the Skywater 130nm PDK https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk).
In OpenTitan we've built all the 'logical' IP ourselves from the ground up. This is the Verilog RTL you can see in our repository but you need the 'physical' IP to make a real chip. We haven't built any physical IP so we need to get it from the traditional industry sources which means traditional industry licensing (i.e. very much not open).
- Cadence market share?
- Compiling Code into Silicon
isc0901b0-breakout
-
Open Beam Interface
I built a couple of glasgow devices and used one extensively- it becomes very useful once the IC in question has an interface you can't practically use with a microcontroller.
I used it to capture data from a thermal imaging sensor (extracted from an automotive night vision camera)- a weird ~75MHz data bus[0].
0: https://github.com/festlv/isc0901b0-breakout?tab=readme-ov-f...
-
DIY-Thermocam: The Affordable and Easy-to-Build Thermal Camera for Everyone
There's another path to cheap thermal imaging- some premium cars have had thermal imagers for night vision (animal, pedestrian detection) for ~10 years.
The most common such system is Autoliv NV3, which is using the same sensor as Tau2/Flir E4/E8 (~320x256px). The original processing electronics does have protection preventing the use of it without car's ECU (though it's already broke), but the sensor interface is reverse engineered. Due to the age of the vehicles and the fact that the protective window in front of the lens is easily damaged, the modules can be bought relatively cheaply (I got mine for ~150EUR).
I made a breakout board for the sensor and have a more-or-less working nmigen gateware (using glasgow): https://github.com/festlv/isc0901b0-breakout
I don't have it fully working yet, as the sensor requires bias values to be sent for each pixel and Glasgow didn't have enough on-board memory to store them, and the thermal image without correct bias values is more or less unusable (many pixels are underexposed/overexposed).
I have hardware ready for ECP5 development board with enough onboard RAM but life got in the way, so it's still sitting in the pile of unfinished projects :/
There's also next generation (Autoliv NV4 == Veoneer NiVi4) which is based on 640x512 Boson sensor, though there is a lot less information about it.
What are some alternatives?
openlane - OpenLane is an automated RTL to GDSII flow based on several components including OpenROAD, Yosys, Magic, Netgen and custom methodology scripts for design exploration and optimization.
wokwi-verilog-gds-test
RocksDB - A library that provides an embeddable, persistent key-value store for fast storage.
diy-thermocam - A do-it-yourself thermal imager, compatible with the FLIR Lepton 2.5, 3.1R and 3.5 sensor with Arduino firmware
gssi - Stuff I worked on while at GSSI (L'Aquila, Italy)
diycamera - An Arduino Based DIY Image Sensor and Camera Body
quibble - Quibble - the custom Windows bootloader
PeakRDL-uvm - Generate UVM register model from compiled SystemRDL input
Verilog.jl - Verilog for Julia
chisel - Chisel: A Modern Hardware Design Language
freepdk-45nm - ASIC Design Kit for FreePDK45 + Nangate for use with mflowgen
edalize - An abstraction library for interfacing EDA tools