“The "Chipalooza" Challenge. Open source analog IP for the SoCs of tomorrow. Five shuttle challenges across three major open-source PDKs. Design an #analog IP block, get it fabricated, and win awards for your effort.
“The goal of Chipalooza Challenge is to provide open source libraries of high-quality analog components useful to designers of SoCs for all three major open source PDKs, enabling cross-platform porting of SoCs and a shared home for the IP that analog designers need. Challenge #1, run by Efabless in 2024, produced dozens of analog circuits for Sky130 across two test chips. The five challenges below continue that work: two more rounds each for Sky130, GF180MCU, and #IHP SG13CMOS5L.”
Similar to #Tiny-Tapeout, I think? Challenge #2, on IHP SG13CMOS5L via IHP, has 28 designs and has schematic review complete. Challenge #3, on GF180MCU via Wafer.Space (#WaferSpace), was only launched on August 17th, but is at “proposal review complete”, so I guess the window to submit a proposal is pretty narrow! Challenge #4, on Sky130 via Chip Foundry, is “expected to launch” in November, and #5, another one on GF180MCU via Wafer.Space, is expected in January, and #6, another one on SG13CMOS5L, is expected in June. #hardware #electronics #PDK
on 02026-09-15“Webinar - Analog schematic capture & simulation with Stefan Schippers”, who wrote Xschem. #Efabless #Tiny-tapeout #video #toread #electronics
on 02025-09-29#IHP 130nm BiCMOS Open Source #PDK for analog, mixed-signal and RF design. Work in progress, but they’re doing their first #Tiny-Tapeout already. “SG13G2 is a high performance BiCMOS technology with a 0.13 μm CMOS process. It contains bipolar devices based on SiGe:C npn-HBT’s with up to 350 GHz transition frequency (fT) and 450 GHz oscillation frequency (fmax).” #electronics #hardware
on 02025-02-2340' #video by #Psychogenic-Technologies (Pat Deegan) on designing analog ASIC #electronics #hardware using Tiny Tapeout’s “new analog capabilities”. Basically he’s hacking together a SAR ADC with an 8-stage resistor ladder, although most of that process is omitted; he submitted it to Tiny Tapeout 6 as “WoWA”. I didn’t realize #Tiny-Tapeout had a WebGL GDS viewer. The video has an annoying amount of talking-head filler. He recommends using tinytapeout_analog_vm to get started quickly, and Efabless’s video, “Webinar - Analog schematic capture & simulation with Stefan Schippers”, who wrote #Xschem, which he’s using here, with the open SKY130 PDK. He remapped Magic’s and Xschem’s keys to match Kicad. He says both Kicad and Xschem do simulations in Ngspice. Xschem’s UI for exploring simulation results looks pretty interesting, being able to click on a waveform out of many waveforms on a plot to change which waveforms are displayed in other linked plots. He does a little bit of demo of using Magic, which evidently involves typing Tcl commands in a command window as you use the mouse, and he lays out a two-MOSFET mixer circuit in it, with guard rings and everything, after having designed and simulated it first in Xschem. He says Netgen (?) is a good LVS (layout vs. schematic) checker, even though its errors are hard to understand. He recommends simulating your digital blocks with Verilator.