Not that way back, rolling your personal printed circuit boards was troublesome, time-consuming and costly. However due to a military of low cost, on-line manufacturing companies in addition to high-quality free design software program, any hobbyist can now make boards to rival these made by professionals. An identical shift is perhaps underway in terms of chip design: inexpensive manufacturing choices and a set of free software program instruments are slowly bringing customized chips into the realm of hackers and hobbyists. A type of working onerous to democratize chip design is [Matt Venn], who’s been telling us all about his present massive challenge, known as Tiny Tapeout, in his discuss at Remoticon 2022.

[Matt]’s quest to deliver IC design to the lots began in 2020, when the primary open-source appropriate Course of Design Equipment (PDK) was launched to the general public. A PDK is a group of information, usually solely out there underneath strict non-disclosure agreements, that describe all of the options of a particular chip manufacturing course of and allow you to make a design. With this free PDK in hand and a rag-tag assortment of free software program instruments, [Matt] got down to design his first chip, a VGA clock, which he taped out (launched to manufacturing) in July 2020.

Constructing on this expertise, [Matt] wrote a whole newbie’s information to chip design, known as the Zero to ASIC course. To present college students the chance to place this principle into follow, he additionally organized a multi-project wafer: a single manufacturing run that swimming pools a number of designs to be able to cut up the price. This turned out to be massively in style, and [Matt] has thus far coordinated seven of those MPWs, every with a great deal of fascinating designs.

Nonetheless, even with a free PDK, open-source instruments and an in depth course explaining the way in which, designing correctly functioning chips continues to be very troublesome. [Matt]’s subsequent massive challenge, known as Tiny Tapeout, subsequently goals to make chip design really easy that even a baby can do it. It does this by integrating all of the required instruments right into a single web-based software and providing an inexpensive manufacturing choice to go along with it.

The online instrument is predicated on WokWi by [Uri Shaked]. WokWi is a browser-based circuit simulation instrument, initially developed for Arduino programming, which [Matt] and [Uri] changed into a logic design and simulation instrument for chip design. When you’ve designed your chip’s logic habits, you may hyperlink the design right into a GitHub repository the place a script will then flip it into a whole chip structure. You possibly can view the structure and even zoom across the transistors in a full 3D view, seeing precisely what the ultimate end result would appear to be underneath a microscope.

On the manufacturing facet, [Matt] supplies every challenge with a chip space of 90 by 120 microns, sufficient for round 400 logic gates. Every chip will get eight inputs and eight outputs, which might function at clock frequencies of as much as 15 kHz. This won’t seem to be a lot, however the challenge’s trial run yielded a number of spectacular initiatives, together with easy counters and adders but in addition a 4-bit CPU and even a 9-LUT FPGA.

There’s area on the chip for about 500 totally different designs, all of which might be current in all manufactured chips – you may select which design is energetic by choosing the ID of that design utilizing DIP switches on the PCB. A complete datasheet will record the contents of every single design, so there’s a lot left to play with even after you’ve checked out your personal work.

[Matt] additionally has a number of issues left to do: he’s aiming so as to add analog and RF performance to the present design circulate, which might allow way more versatile designs that may hook up with sensors and drive high-speed knowledge buses. One instrument that may assist in instructing analog design is SiliWiz, one other web-based simulation instrument he’s been engaged on that permits you to play with on-chip transistor layouts and see their electrical habits in actual time.

We will’t assist however be impressed by [Matt]’s tireless work to make chip design out there to anybody, and we’re trying ahead to the following, much more highly effective era of Tiny Tapeout. Maybe in the future, submitting a GDS file to a fab will appear simply as strange as sending Gerbers to a PCB store is at this time.