Open Source EDA Roadmap for Europe

by Stefan Wallentowitz on August 16, 2024

FOSSi Supports GoIT in Drafting Roadmap Towards Open-Source EDA

As reported earlier the CHIPS Joint Undertaking has asked the community for a roadmap for open source EDA tools in Europe. The goal of the roadmap is to describe gaps for open source EDA tools in focus areas that are important for the European chip ecosystem. At ORConf 2024 we will present the first draft and open the community discussion process.

So far, two community events have led to the first discussions and brought everyone together:

  • On May 14, a webinar was held to present opportunities of open source EDA and discuss in a broad forum.
  • June 18, a workshop of open source experts met in Paris to spend an entire day on focused discussions to identify work areas.

Recently, FOSSi Foundation was invited to support the GoIT project in their efforts of writing the roadmap document. Matthew Venn and Stefan Wallentowitz were assigned to lead the roadmap effort. We have since then invited a core group of key persons, that have demonstrated skills and leadership. In a first step we have identified the following focus areas of the roadmap:

  • Verification
  • Analog/RF/mixed signal for mature nodes
  • Generators and automated layout
  • Digital design flow for mature nodes - gaps and performance
  • Digital design flow for advanced nodes
  • Heterogeneous integration and packaging
  • Productivity and tool interoperability

Currently, leaders for each of those focus areas are working with the community on describing the industry perspective, highlight open source success stories, and identifying the gaps and necessary work in those focus areas. Finally, for each focus area the roadmap will make recommendations for short term and mid/long term opportunities that could benefit from funding.

Those are the current plans for the process:

  • The first release of the roadmap will be published on September 13 and presented at ORConf. The recording will be made available as quickly as possible for everyone to be on the same page. Anyhow, we invite everyone to be there, to discuss with peers and use the excellent networking opportunity.
  • Following the release we open a feedback process to the entire community to gather their input. The core group will discuss the input and engage with the community to ensure all opinions are heard.
  • End of October the final roadmap will be published.

We hope to meet you at ORConf and look forward to an intense and fruitful 10 weeks!