TSMC hopes to develop with open source

TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC) is looking to develop some of its designs by inviting open sourcerers to have a look at them.

The outfit has had The Open Innovation Platform (OIP) in to look after its open source projects for a while. Now it says it wants the OIP to focus on electronic-system level design, virtual platforms and high-level synthesis.

There will be other programs to fix its 65nm, 40nm and 28nm process node analog, mixed-signal and RF design methodologies while a third initiative will tackle multi-die packaging through 2D/3D IC design.

Fu-Chieh Hsu, TSMC VP of design technology platform and deputy head of R&D wants to see the packaging of entire electronic systems onto multi-chip packages.

TSMC has lots of little helpers already signed up including 30 EDA, 38 IP, 23 Design Centre Alliance, nine Value Chain Aggregator partners and five gold rings.

TSMC will release a radio frequency reference design kit and will shortly announce the availability of its analog/mixed-signal reference flow 1.0 documentation.

The kit will use TSMC's 65nm RF CMOS process technology, accelerating analog, mixed-signal, and RF designs and RF system-on-chip (SoC) verification and integration. It resolves the long-standing challenge of performing full chip verification on SoC devices that support analog, RF, mixed signal and digital content. µ