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Google Developing Open Source Chip Design Software

Last month, Google launched a new division focused on bringing technology to educational and public sector institutions at federal, state, and local levels.

Google Public Sector has teamed with US chip manufacturer SkyWater Technology to build an open source platform to design semiconductors, which can then be built in a SkyWater factory.

Chip design software, called electronic design automation, is usually expensive to license, with the manufacturing of test chips running to tens of thousands of dollars. This incentive aims to eliminate these costs.

“We’re hoping that the collaboration is going to address what are really historical limitations of chip design and production, both for national defense as well as commercial markets, because researchers get improved accessibility and developers get to go through that exploration faster and candidly at lower costs,” said Will Grannis, CEO of Google Public Sector.

The US Department of Defense is investing A$21.5 million in the platform. SkyWater CEO Thomas Sonderman explains “one of the reasons the US government is investing in this initiative is because they can then take the output of a lot of this development.”

This comes as the US Senate passed a reduced version of the CHIPS act, aimed at bolstering US semiconductor manufacturing.



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