Open source radiation hardened standard cell library and EDA flow

Abstract

The development of integrated circuits (ICs) has historically had a high cost of entry due to the cost of licensing industry standard Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools and the Intellectual Property (IP) of semiconductor manufacturers, essential to IC design. With the release of Skywater Technologies open source 130nm PDK, a robust and functional EDA IC design flow using open source tools can be developed, allowing for a zero cost of entry into IC design. With the created open source flow, it can be used to fill the gaps where open source software has yet to fill. More importantly, there are currently no open source radiation hardened standard cell libraries available today. Using the open source EDA flow developed here, a VLSI compatible radiation hardened standard cell library is created, implemented, and assembled.