chipignite Silicon Showcase

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chipIgnite is an innovative open-source chip design platform that makes it easy and affordable to create custom silicon. With chipIgnite, you can design and fabricate your own chip using a pre-built chip with a RISC-V core, an open-source automated design flow, and a large community of support.

The chipIgnite Silicon Showcase is a collection of examples of silicon created using chipIgnite. These examples showcase the wide range of possibilities that chipIgnite offers. Check out these cool projects!

Silicon Showcase

Bandgap Voltage Reference

John Kustin made this bandgap circuit as part of his graduate training. The experience is what made him decide to do a PhD in the field. It was taped out on chipIgnite and he brought it up and tested it. He used xschem for schematic and magic for layout. The bandgap achieves a TC of ~3.6 PPM/C.

Designer: John Kustin

GitHub | Layout

About the Author:
John Kustin entered the open-source silicon ecosystem during his Junior year at Stanford through Professor Priyanka Raina’s EE272B 10-week tapeout class. His open-source bandgap circuit in SkyWater 130nm won his department’s Student Design Project Award. After graduating with a BS in Electrical Engineering in June, 2022, he joined the University of Michigan to pursue a PhD in EE. John is interested in training the next generation of IC designers and democratizing IC design.

Riscduino

Riscduino is a single 32-bit RISC-V-based SoC design that is pin-compatible with the Arduino platform and targeted for the Efabless Shuttle program. This project uses only open-source toolsets for simulation, synthesis, and backend tools. The SoC flow follows the OpenLane methodology, and the SoC environment is compatible with the eFabless/Caravel methodology.

Designer: Dinesh Annayya

GitHub | Layout

About the Author
Dinesh Annaya is an ardent Open-Source EDA enthusiast and an expert user of OpenROAD™ and OpenLane. He developed a baseline RISCduino SoC, a single, 32 bit RISC-V based controller compatible with the Arduino platform . He has submitted over 15 designs on Open MPW shuttles on sky130- https://github.com/dineshannayya/riscduino. During the course of his design journey, he successively improved the design architecture for better performance, and enhanced functionality. His main motivation for the use of Open-Source EDA tools is to gauge the quality of results and potential for commercial use.

Turing-complete 8-bit MCU

A turing-complete 8-bit microprocessor based on a niche 70s architecture, successfully taped out on the first GF180 shuttle. It can easily run complex programs, such as rendering the Mandelbrot fractal, or powering a conference badge.

Designer: Luca "Tholin" H.

GitHub | Layout

VGA Clock

This simple digital design demonstrates a VGA clock implemented as part of a multi-project submission from Matt Venn's Zero-to-ASIC course.

Designer: Matt Venn

GitHub link | Layout

Frequency Counter

This design implements a frequency counter based on counting edge transitions of an input signal. The frequency measured by the chip is converted to a two-digit 7-segment display shown in the video.

Designer: Matt Venn

GitHub link | Layout