Changing the Chip Industry

They were looking at a Process Design Kit, or PDK: the complete set of physical rules and transistor models used by a chip factory in the United States to manufacture silicon. These documents were among the most fiercely guarded in the global technology industry; no engineer outside the factory’s customer roster could see one without first signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). European Union public money has paid for a meaningful part of what now exists, and most Europeans have no idea. To see why it matters, you have to understand what designing a chip actually entails, and why almost none of that process was open before 2019. Beneath that human-readable layer, a pile of automated tools translates the logic downward: Synthesis turns the description into gates, placement and routing decide where those gates sit on the silicon surface of the chip, verification checks the design against its specification, and sign-off tools confirm that the design meets the manufacturing rules and standards of the chip factory — called a “foundry” in the industry. NGI Zero is made possible with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology.