Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) are commonly the critical element used in the design and implementation of electrical products throughout the Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC). It is, however, fairly common for manufacturers to discontinue old product lines not commonly in use within the greater state-of-the-art economy. A common way to combat this obsolescence it to leverage Field Programmable Gate Array(FPGA) devices, which are able to satisfy the common requirements for ASIC devices while still offering reconfigurability. Unfortunately, as the availability of "secure" FPGA platforms is waning, FPGAs may no longer provide the level of security and reverse engineering "hardness" that is expected by DOE/DOD customers. In order to react to these unique challenges that are encountered at the KCNSC, we must investigate in the generation of in-house ASICs as a replacement for previous FPGA designs. The goal of this project is to develop a preconfigured deployable software image containing the necessary ASIC design tools and environments to enable a streamlined deployment. The tools will be aimed at use for processes such as the Google OpenMPW program. Presently, the documentation on existing open-source ASIC design tools is limited, making the process of installing and configuring all of the necessary software tools a challenge. This ad hoc nature also means variability between user installations and adds extra steps to verify each software installation. To overcome this barrier to entry, this project seeks to develop a ready to use software image that can be easily deployed with new users with all of the necessary tools to begin their use for ASIC development from layout to tape out.
Posting date: Mon, 04/01/2024
Award start date: Fri, 12/01/2023
Award end date: Sat, 08/31/2024