Hardware design is one of the disciplines that is growing the most in recent years. This is due to the fact that in order to optimize the applications, their design begins to be linked to that of the PC’s hardware. This situation results in the creation of what we call accelerators, on the one hand, and domain-specific processors on the other. However, the fact of designing hardware supposes a human, economic and time cost that not everyone has. Something Google intends to fix this with your Open MPW program.
If we have enough knowledge we can design hardware for specific needs. The problem is that unless we have in our hands a project that is going to be used massively, today we cannot manufacture it anywhere. FPGAs are obviously for this, but their total configurability is a double-edged sword in terms of costs. It’s also not that we need access to the most advanced fabrication nodes for certain levels of complexity and certain solutions, but the level of complexity that we can achieve with configurable chips is relatively low for certain applications.
What is Google’s Open MPW program?
In November 2020, Google reached an agreement with SkyWater Technologies to open source its process-based design kit. SKY130. A very simple manufacturing process based only on a 130nm node. Although good enough to have a community of 3,000 members who share their totally open hardware design projects.
The idea, therefore, is not reduced to being able to design chips, but rather the ability to manufacture them and install them in existing products. Thus, the project gives each user the ability to design and manufacture chips with a 2.92 x 3.52 mm area and 38 pins for I/O. This is something that may seem very modest to us and more so with a manufacturing node like the 130 nm one. But it is ideal for small projects, especially facing the world of the Internet of things.
What products have been made?
Well, strange things like:
- Small accelerators for matrix calculation, closely related to artificial intelligence.
- Dedicated systems for data encryption and decryption.
- Fixed function processors and accelerators to complement heterogeneous ARM or RISC-V based processors.
- Hardware for musical devices such as guitars, keyboards, etc.
- Fully hardware-executed versions of applications like Sudokus, Tetris or the recently popular Wordle.
The agreement between Google and SkyWater Technologies offers a large number of tools for the design and deployment of hardware solutions, which you can find on their website. All of them open source.
What advantages does it bring?
The project also gives the different teams the freedom to work on design with an environment similar to that of open source software, but focused on the design of new chips. Since the designs of the program meet the following premises:
- They do not violate any existing patents.
- They can be easily reproduced by third parties.
What are the projects that you would do and why? We are very interested to know. In any case, if you are interested in signing up for the program, hurry up. You have until June 8 in the current call.
