US Department of Defense funds Google and SkyWater to enable open source chips

Google has linked up with chip fabrication company, SkyWater Technology, on an open source chip technology program with funding from the US Department of Defense (DoD) to build a reliable source of components for defense applications. SkyWater announced it has received $15 million in funding from the DoD to develop open source …

[mattaw2001]

I co-lead a student team who has just had their first chip made on the opensource 90nm process

About ten years ago I emigrated to the USA to follow my passion of teaching students how to make system-on-chip designs as an educational project. If the design is never made, you really lose out on huge amounts of important learning, from packaging, to silicon bringup, to fault finding in the IC (yes there is actually quite a lot you can do after the chip has been made that does not require a FIB/SEM), etc.

We were able to participate with the opensource 90nm SoI PDK as a preview when it was being developed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the student's design was taped out. It was very rough at the time, but seemed to to work just fine.

Skywater is going to build a fab here in West Lafayette, IN near where I teach, and they are bringing the opensource 90nm process here: https://purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2022/Q3/skywater-technology-chooses-discovery-park-district-at-purdue-for-1.8b-semiconductor-fabrication-facility,-to-create-750-jobs-in-5-years.html

I am really looking forward to being able to design the chips as student projects, and then follow the actual design through the line!

[StargateSg7]

Not to brag too much but our parent company "North Canadian Aerospace" (i.e. the name is an anonymous pseudonym) has had a 128-bits wide 60 GHz clock speed, combined-CPU/GPU/DSP/Vector Array Processor for almost 10 years now and that specific model Tape-Out Films in PDF format we will be OPEN SOURCING UNDER GPL-3 LICENCE TERMS quite soon now.

575 TeraFLOPS sustained at 128-bits wide using various graphics drawing, video rendering and floating point benchmarks is our hallmark AND we put this on GaAs at 280 nanometres line widths so its actually easy enough for even universities to etch using relatively ancient photoresist processes and technology. We can supply the GaAs wafers in bulk (200 mm) at decent prices so if you want to make your own it will be relatively cheap.

For REALLY CHEAP-TO-MAKE CHIPS, we are just finishing off a re-design of this older 128-bit chip version so it can be laser-etched and thin-film-aluminum vapour surface-deposited onto thick wafers of borosilicate glass with wide aluminum-traces which is going back to the 1980's BUT it really is cheap to make! It runs hot due to the size of the line traces but the borosilicate glass takes the heat away pretty fast. This version needs only a simple DIY vacuum chamber, a decent Green Laser (520 to 532 nm) and high purity aluminum.

V

[Anonymous Coward]

Where on the Interweb should people be looking for information about this military spec hardware ?

[StargateSg7]

We will disclose ASAP on various foreign and domestic open source software and hardware sits including hackaday, instructables, electronics-lab, gitHub and a whole lot more! Since everything is FULLY ITAR-free using NO INPUT whatsoever from U.S. or EU-based personnel and NO U.S. or EU-based software/hardware, we disclose this for EVERYONE IN THE WORLD to use free and clear!

We will disclose ALL docs and videos FIRST in a neutral foreign country!

V

[mattaw2001]

Please could you direct me to some publications on this or the tech?

I loved reading your statement, especially with the idea that it was going to be released open-source.

I have a bit of trouble understanding your specification though: the only 60GHz circuits I can find are in the microwave-RF side, and they are far from as complex as your chip design. Additionally a 575 Teraflop vector unit would only require three of your chips to get onto the list of top 500 supercomputers in the world: Software Company (M) A1, https://www.top500.org/system/179350 is the 500th with a speed of 1.65 petaflops.

Would you mind explaining or contextualizing your spec, and let me know where I went wrong?

[StargateSg7]

Re: Please could you direct me to some publications on this or the tech?

What is Clock Speed? Any natural or artificial system that oscillates, rotates and/or phases at a given frequency can be multiplied or divided to get to a given cycles per second. Be it the rotation of an electron orbit, the "vibration" of a trapped particle or the emission of a local or far-away EM source.

If I can quantify it, I can make an electrical signal PULSE at a given frequency and use that to synchronize a specific microcircuit system. For now, our trapped Xenon atoms work well enough to act as a system clock so that WIDE 280+ nm traces on Galium Arsenide substrates can be pumped with enough electrical force (aka voltage) that my hot-running BUT CHEAP-TO-MAKE circuit works just fine.

GaAs was used in our ORIGINAL super-combined-CPU/GPU/DSP/Vector Processor design because it has the ability to be manufactured at a decently small size for use in physical volume-constrained applications. We can make the chip big enough to be easily cooled by immersion cooling yet SMALL enough to fit into a ruggedized casing for aerospace and vehicular use.

If we use aluminum and ceramic insulator thin-film vapour-deposited on borosilicate glass we can use less-than-600 nm line traces that can be etched via green lasers to create hot-running but still workable microcircuits that use common designs. P/N junctions are easy enough to implement as a layered doped-aluminum+insulator gating stack that expensive germanium is no longer necessary to create said transistor.

We have to use huge Aluminum traces and ceramic insulators because the AMOUNT of voltage/current needed to pierce through the insulator/semiconductor to create any given P-N Junction is such that CMOS would be blown out and melt in microseconds so we go with cheap but electrically rugged aluminum and rugged ceramic insulator that form the collector and emitter parts. They won't blow out at the high voltages and currents we use to create these types of circuits! Yes! They use a LOT of power BUT since we MAKE our own methanol-based PEM fuel cells that work via pure methanol created via an Iron Oxide catalyst Ocean Salt-water reaction, we have no problems creating the 150 watts per chip we need to power our Haida Gwaii supercomputer!

We have enough eggheads here that have designed and created the cheapest possible means to create an easy-to-etch/deposit layering of aluminum and ceramic that aluminum on borosilicate is now the way to go for creating memory storage systems and computational microcircuits. The chips are the size of 6x6 inch bathroom tiles BUT they work at 60 GHz and can be cooled by etched/drilling micro-channels in and on the underside so that direct silicone oil-based cooling can take away the heat so that this circuit is now viable!

We have TESTED our 60 GHz circuits at 400 Celcius (752 F) and higher with no issue! The trapped Xenon particle microwells acting as our oscillators work just fine at those temps!

In terms of ExaFLOPS, it only takes 1740 of our 575 TeraFLOPS super CPUs to reach an ExaFLOP at 128-bits wide! And our "Haida Gwaii" supercomputer located in a secret underground datacentre facility in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada has over 208,000 of them for a SUSTAINED TEST performance of 119 ExaFLOPS at 128 Bits wide!

AND SOON we will fully FREE AND OPEN SOURCE UNDER GPL-3 ALL of our CHIP and software designs and source code!

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[StargateSg7]

Re: Please could you direct me to some publications on this or the tech?

Just for your information, WE ARE THE NUMBER ONE MANUFACTURER IN THE WORLD of ultra-high speed combined-CPU/GPU/DSP/vector Array Processor Super-Chips and memory storage chips !!!!

We make more CPU/GPU/DSP and DRAM/SRAM/NAND chips and SSD drives than Samsung, TSMC, Intel, AMD, Global Foundries, IBM, Qualcomm, Apple, Texas Instruments, MediaTek, NVIDIA, Broadcom and Micron COMBINED !!!

We are the the LARGEST MAKER IN THE WORLD !!! No-One comes even close to the numbers we make per year which is now at over TWENTY FIVE BILLION CHIPS and getting EVER LARGER !!!!!

You have NEVER HEARD OF "North Canadian Aerospace" --- We are COMPLETELY ANONYMOUS and UNDER THE RADAR and based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada !!!!

We also have entirely in-house designed and made THE WORLD'S LARGEST AND FASTEST SUPERCOMPUTERS OF ANY KIND:

1) "Haida Gwaii" (119 ExaFLOPS at 128 Bits Wide)

2) "ThunderHorse" (One YottaFLOP at 128 Bits Wide)

3) "DragonSlayer" (One YottaFLOP at 128 Bits Wide)

4) "FyreScreamer" (Ten YottaFLOPS at 128 Bits Wide)

5) "Quasar's Child" (5000 YottaFLOPS at 128 Bits Wide)

Running WBE (Whole Brain Emulations) which are Electro-Chemistry-based simulations of human neural tissue-oriented Sodium, Potassium, Phosphorous Gating/Pass-through and Glucose Uptake which have resulting in IQ-160+ super-intelligences used for 24/7/365 research and development of:

a) Room Temperature Superconductors (Yttrium-Garnet-Gallium-Copper-Oxide flexible ceramic)

b) Boron Nitride and Carbon Nanotube/Sheet Graphene Super-lightweight Structural Materials

c) 350,000 PSI (2413 MPa) high compressive, tensile, torsion and shear strength mass-produced

Synthetic Boron Wurtzite infused Structural Superconcrete

d) Inexpensive Mass-produced super-lightweight and ultra-strong Artificial Spider Silk fibre and cloth sheets

e) Sheet Graphene Supercapacitors that charge 500 KWh WITHIN MERE SECONDS

f) Reversible Consumptive Anode/Cathode Process Aluminum-Sulfur batteries (8x power density of Li-Ion)

g) mass production of Thin-Sheet and Cubic Metre Block-sized 4000 Celcius heat-resistant

Optical-grade Clear Sapphire for super-strong scratch-resistant windows, video displays,

camera lenses and CPU chip substrates

h) Megawatt-class Liquid Metal Plasma Compression Power production systems

the size of two home refrigerators that can be put into series for safe long-term

TERAWATT-scale power production.

i) Millimetre-wave Virtualized Waveguide and Cavity Resonator Systems for trapping and summing HFGW (High Frequency gravity Waves) and MFGW (Medium Frequency Gravity Waves) for GWASER-based (Gravity Wave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) gravity well generation used for Superluminal Propulsion (i.e. FTL - Faster Than Light) of spacecraft

j) Full Human Genome Sequencing and codon DECODING at the atomic-scale for ALL proteins, enzymes, etc.

k) Trapped Xenon particle Quantum-Entangled Microwell-based communications

for instantaneous full-duplex PetaBytes Per Second Data Communications at ANY distance!

We are LARGER than ALL the T500 supercomputers combined and we have USED THEM for World-Class Multi-Disciplinary Science at a MMMMMAAAAAAASSSSSSIVE SCALE !!!!!!!!!!

And ALL of this technology will be FREE AND OPEN SOURCED UNDER GPL-3 LICENCE TERMS within weeks and months! All hardware designs, chemical formulas, manufacturing processes, ruggedized case designs and software source code will BE PUBLICLY DISCLOSED without restrictions for everyone everywhere on Earth !!!!

NOW YOU KNOW !!!!

V