Quote from: P4man on April 17, 2012, 05:41:50 PM

Quote from: rjk on April 17, 2012, 05:21:41 PM

Well that's fucked up, can't they take a "general" design and adapt it to their processes as part of the mask fee?

Yes and no. A synthesizable design, aka soft core can be ported relatively easy between different processes. You can think of it as the source code of the chip which has to be compiled for a process.

But thats not the problem; what we call a process, consists of pre-made transistor designs and a whole set of design rules. Thats different for every process, and almost every fab. So you once you "compile" your design and generate a mask, its no longer portable and you will still need a specific mask for every process.

Since the cost of that mask is what is preventing ASICs from being available today, I dont really see what problem open sourcing a design would solve. It might be neat project for a hardware engineer, but who's going to pay the mask? And why wouldnt he use a less portable, but better optimized design? A soft core is never very optimized.

Many thanks for all the insights.
I understand that the mask cost will take a big share on the project. But what you call the soft core must carry a certain work, time and cost too. The idea is to make it public all the design processes and optimizations tasks, that are not part of the mask manufacturing itself. We will need to subcontract an "open" fab or fabless provider with no NDA issues.
Does it make any sense ?