This is a crowdfunding campaign for opening up a PDK (process design kit) for a VLSI process node from one of the large FABs, which can then be used to design microchips.
Why? At the moment, there are no PDKs that can be used to fabricate actual chips that are not restricted by NDAs. This is limiting collaboration and limiting innovation, therefore we would like to change this situation. Since it costs a lot of money and effort to create a competitive PDK, we would like to collectively pay a fair price for opening up an existing PDK.
What will the PDK contain?
The PDK will contain the standard cell library (at least in the liberty fileformat), the SPICE models for the cells, DRC and LVS rules, and documentation for all the cells.
1. Stage: We are collecting how much people would be willing to contribute to an OpenPDK and their wishes for the OpenPDK
2. We are asking several foundries to offer one or more of their PDKs for this campaign, providing them the wishlist that was collected
3. A foundry will hopefully provide an offer for their PDK
4. We will run this crowdfunding campaign to finance the offer. The existing non-binding offers will be asked whether they agree to the offer or not.
5. When the campaign is successful, the money will be collected, passed to the FAB, and the PDK will become OpenSource.
6. The Fab will guarantee a 10 year availability of the process node after the publication.
Price: We are currently in the negotiation process with the FABs, we do not have a price yet.
Therefore I would like to try a new crowdfunding through ForgeFunder
You can decide yourself for the maximum price you are willing to pay.
The crowdfunding campaign will end on (undecided yet). Remaining time:
Pledge: