SkyWater Technology, Inc. announced a new SkyWater open-source 130 nm process design kit (PDK) from Cadence Design Systems Inc., which will be available in the Cadence VLSI (very large-scale integration) Fundamentals Education Kit. The kit teaches students how theories and concepts can be applied in the design of simple logic circuits and in the physical implementation of a simplified microprocessor. Semiconductor foundries offer PDKs to aid design on a manufacturing process, but due to restricted access and the need for NDAs, this has created a barrier to access by academia.

To overcome this issue, SkyWater collaborated with Cadence to create an open-source chip manufacturing program on 130 nm CMOS process (SKY130). The SKY130 process has gained popularity among academia and researchers and can be easily accessed from GitHub with no NDA necessary. Semiconductor design and manufacturing courses are becoming increasingly important as the U.S. focuses on building a domestic semiconductor workforce by investing in manufacturing facilities, partnering with industry, educators, and training providers, supporting semiconductor education and training, and fueling research and development.

The SKY130 open-source offering has implications for accelerating and multiplying collaboration in semiconductor chip design. Verification results can be easily and cost-effectively replicated by other designers and idea generation can be amplified to feed product development that is ongoing in IoT, automotive, industrial, medical and defense applications. The Cadence VLSI Fundamentals Education Kit is a CMOS VLSI Design course structured to enhance academic curriculum, which contains several lecture presentations to teach the fundamental theoretical knowledge of VLSI design.

It also contains four labs that explain the design of a mixed-signal IC using Cadence's latest tools: Virtuoso Studio, Genus Synthesis Solution, Innovus Implementation System, Xcelium Logic Simulator, Pegasus Verification System, and Spectre Simulation Platform. The design is based on a simple Arm-based microprocessor and is being migrated to the SKY130 PDK.