[Workshop] Democratizing IC Design, April 7th, 2021

Solid-State Circuits Directions Workshop: Democratizing IC Design

Wednesday, April 7th, 2021 at 7:00 AM PT / 10:00 AM ET This event is free and open to all

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

EVENT DESCRIPTION Solid-State Circuits Directions (SSCD) is a new technical committee within the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (related article). Its charter is to promote forward-looking topics, build new communities and stimulate interaction with others. Following SSCD’s inaugural event on hardware security, the upcoming workshop will look at the new movement toward an open-source ecosystem for integrated circuit design. Over the past several decades, society has strongly benefited from free and open-source software. More recently, the open-source spirit has expanded to hardware and has energized a new maker community that tinkers with embedded systems at the printed circuit board level. Groundbreaking developments have now also opened the door toward democratizing integrated circuit design. Last year, Google, SkyWater and efabless have partnered to launch a shuttle program based on SkyWater’s SKY130 open-source process (130 nm CMOS). This technology is offered to the open community along with a complete design flow to enable designers to implement their ideas. This workshop will provide an overview of this program and highlight upcoming opportunities to benefit from it. Finally, it will showcase specific design work delivered by the community members and articulate a call to action for volunteers to design, teach and mentor. AGENDA 7:00 AM PT- Welcome & Introductions (Boris Murmann, Stanford University) 7:05 AM PT- Fully open source manufacturable PDK for a 130nm process (Tim Ansell, Google) 7:35 AM PT- 45 Chips in 30 Days: Open Source ASIC at its best! (Mohamed Kassem, efabless) 7:55 AM PT- Design 1: Open Source eFPGA implementation in SKY130 (Xifan Tang, University of Utah) 8:25 AM PT- Design 2: Amateur Radio Satellite Transceiver (Thomas Parry, SystematIC Design) 8:55 AM PT- Call to Action: Need volunteers to design, teach and mentor 9:00 AM PT- Adjourn

Dr. Jindal has been nominated for the Delegate-Elect/Director-Elect 2015

Dr. Renuka Jindal is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, LA, USA since 2002. His research and teaching interests lie in the theory and practice of random processes applicable to a wide variety of phenomena in electronic and photonic devices and circuits, lightwave and wireless communications systems and biological organs. Dr. Jindal was elected Fellow of IEEE in 1991 for his seminal work reducing MOSFET noise by almost an order of magnitude for analog and RF applications. He is also a recipient of the IEEE 3rd Millennium medal. For last four decades of his dual career in industry and academia, Dr. Jindal rose through the ranks as Editor, Editor-in-Chief, VP of Publications, and as EDS President in 2010- 2011. As President he formulated the vision and mission of EDS enhancing member benefits launching a plethora of initiatives reversing the decline in EDS membership. A partial list of his accomplishments is given below:

• Brought together 6 societies and 1 council to launch highly successful IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics mushrooming IEEE’s share in the PV space http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6055242
• Launched EDS webinar series serving the practicing engineers; now considered a best practice in IEEE http://eds.ieee.org/webinars.html
• Launched the 1st EDS OPEN ACCESS Journal J-EDS http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6471856
• Founded QuestEDS for members to get authoritative answers to technical questions within 2 weeks http://eds.ieee.org/questeds/why-questeds.html
• Founded the EDS Celebrated Member program to honor EDS Nobel Laureates and other luminaries. http://eds.ieee.org/celebrated-members.html
• Mentored the launch of a high-school outreach program (EDS-ETC) across United States and abroad http://eds.ieee.org/the-eds-etc-program.html
• As chapter partner, for over 15 years, stimulated a spectacular growth of EDS chapters in South Asia from one to 19 serving Division I.

As Senior-Past President of EDS Dr. Jindal is still very much engaged with IEEE. Recently, Dr. Jindal has been nominated by IEEE Division I to run for the Delegate-Elect/Director-Elect 2015 position in the upcoming IEEE elections. The electorate consists of members of three societies i.e. Electron Devices (ED), Solid-State Circuits (SSC) and Circuits and Systems (CAS). The slate consists of three candidates one from each of these societies. 

On his behalf, I suggest to contact your colleagues in IEEE regions 1-10 for his support since IEEE ballots will be out by August 15.