[FOSSi Dial-Up] James Stine - Designing new 130nm cells for SkyWater 130nm

Existing design flows and tools require excessive design costs to achieve the power, area, and performance requirements of complex system-on-chip (SoC) solutions. Consequently, the semiconductor industry needs high-level synthesis tools that provide the ability to quickly develop and accurately evaluate complex SoC solutions. These tools should provide accurate area, delay, and power estimates from high-level SoC architecture descriptions. They should also provide support for a wide variety of components including embedded memories, mixed-signal designs, custom and standard cell circuits, high-performance/low-power processors, and communication structures, such as buses and on-chip networks. In addition to being well documented, easy to use, and publicly available, the design flows should work in conjunction with industry-standard design tools. This project will provide publicly-available high-level synthesis tools for complex SoC solutions for the SkyWater 130nm. The tools improve productivity by allowing SoC designers to quickly develop and evaluate high-performance, low-power systems. They also provide an improved understanding of area, performance, and power tradeoffs in SoC designs. The instructional materials and sample SoC architectures provided are useful for engineers, edu- cators, and students, who are new to the area of SoC design, as well. Most importantly, the tools are designed to be free and open-source software (FOSS) and integrate with tools from eFabless as well as other open-source endeavors. FOSSi Dial-Up is an online event series by the Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation. Head over to https://fossi-foundation.org/dial-up/ for a list of talks.