Google has announced a partnership with SkyWater Technology, a semiconductor engineering and manufacturing foundry based in Bloomington, Minnesota, to enable developers with limited funds to build chip products on the 130nm process through an open source design kit, and earlier announced this service 90nm process technology will be provided free of charge.
The 90nm process technology provided for free this time can still be used through the SKY90-FD open source design kit cooperating with Google and SkyWater Technology, and can be operated in a web server environment that conforms to the Apache 2.0 specification.
The 90nm process technology provided this time is based on the 90nm FDSOI CMOS process proposed by the Lincoln Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, allowing designers to design chips with more complex circuits, and correspond to higher execution rates and lower power consumption.
Like the previously provided 130nm process, although the current process technology has been down to smaller specifications, the process technology provided by itself can still be used for the design of most IoT devices and passive components, while providing different process technologies, Google is expected to be able to drive more Diversified open source chip design development.