To Whom It May Concern
March 31, 2025
The European Chips Act has set ambitious goals and its implementation is a significant pan-european effort. From an academic perspective, last year we published an open letter emphasizing the critical importance of open-source EDA for academia in Europe. We were excited and grateful to see that this initiative triggered the definition of a European roadmap in this area, and a matching Chips JU call for project funding. We believe that the projects funded by this call will have a significant impact. Moreover, we already see rising interest from many EU stakeholders, with increasing investments into open-source chip design, especially in open source IP development (e.g. RISC-V cores), and open source EDA tools.
One additional critical barrier remains toward the end-goal of building real open-source chips, especially for prototyping and education: namely, streamlining the access to open source chip production facilities (foundries) is essential. Programs like ChipIgnite, Tiny Tapeout and IHP’s open source program have become “guiding stars” that demonstrate that everyone with a computer can build chips. We believe that having low-cost, regular and easy access to chip production is critical to create excitement and build up expertise, widening the pool of chip designers with tape-out experience: a true silicon democratization and a further de-mystification of chip design‚.
Currently, academia and companies can get affordable access to chip manufacturing via EUROPRACTICE-IC, which has been instrumental in supporting IC design in Europe and has so far enabled hundreds of designs to be manufactured. Each silicon manufacturer (foundry) provides a set of rules and configurations that help designers ensure that their ICs can be reliably manufactured, achieving satisfactory performance. These so-called Process Design Kits (PDKs) have long been proprietary and were made available under non-disclosure agreements. Anyone that wishes to manufacture an IC has to sign an NDA to get access to PDK allowing the design to be completed.
Up until recently, signing such an NDA (besides a legal complication) did not have that much of a detrimental effect. IC design was only practiced by larger entities and required the use of commercial IP and EDA tools that brought additional restrictions. With the wider adoption of open-source EDA tools and IPs, one by one these restrictions have fallen wayside: higher quality open-source IP and open-source EDA tools have removed barriers, leaving the NDAs for technology PDKs one of the few remaining obstacles that limit open collaboration, and the democratization of IC design.
In the past few years, thanks to private financial support, Skywater 130nm and Globalfoundries 180MCU technologies have been released as open PDKs. They were followed by IHP 130nm technology, released thanks to German government funding. These open PDKs have already enabled the tapeout and fabrication of hundreds of open-source ICs through Tiny Tapeout. We applaud these initiatives: Giving open, NDA-free access to mature technology nodes is in our view the perfect way to remove the last remaining technical and legal obstacles to open-source silicon fabrication.
However, even the Open PDKs still require professional support, as the process of completing a design that can be reliably manufactured requires skill and experience, and in some instances the OpenPDKs still do not contain the same level of information that is available in the closed PDKs. For this reason companies, such as Efabless, have been founded to provide a vital service, acting as an intermediary, a broker, between the open source hardware community and the foundries providing the technologies, ensuring that designs could be manufactured reliably. Unfortunately, the US-based startup Efabless went out of business abruptly, leaving a momentary gap in this much needed service. More importantly, this event demonstrates the urgency of supporting the development of multiple open PDKs, as well as funding service centers for managing and brokering IC manufacturing based on open PDKs in Europe: resiliency and sovereignty on the entire path to silicon is essential for the EU to finalize the process of silicon democratization!
We therefore strongly recommend two short-term actions aiming at democratizing silicon access, growing the community of European students and practitioners with tape-out experience from hundreds to thousands:
With those two actions we expect a significant impact on further talent development and the European chip design community.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely, the signatories
Sign (please note: delay until added below)
(responsible authors: Stefan Wallentowitz, Frank K. Gürkaynak, Luca Benini; supported by FOSSi Foundation)
Stefan Wallentowitz - Professor, Hochschule University of Applied Sciences & Director, FOSSi Foundation - Germany
Frank K. Gürkaynak - Senior Scientist, ETH Zürich - Switzerland
Luca Benini - Professor, ETH Zürich & University Bologna - Switzerland, Italy
Matt Venn - Founder, Tiny Tapeout & YosysHQ - Spain
René Scholz - Group Leader Research and Prototyping Service, IHP - Germany
Tomi Rantakari - CEO, ChipFlow - Spain
Christian Pilato - Associate Professor, Politecnico di Milano - Italy
Luis Miguel Pinho - Senior Researcher, INESC TEC & Professor, ISEP, Portugal - Portugal
Norbert Wehn - Professor, University of Kaiserslautern-Landau - Germany
Cristina Silvano - Professor, Politecnico di Milano - Italy
Matthias Jung - Professor, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg - Germany
Enrico Macii - Professor, Politecnico di Torino - Italy
Zine-Eddine Haboussi - Master Student, JKU Linz - Austria
Bharath - Graduate Student, TUM - Germany
Thomas Kämpfe - Professor, TU Braunschweig & Department Manager, Fraunhofer IPMS - Germany
Lukas Krupp - Project Manager University Alliance, Chipdesign Germany & Postdoctoral Researcher, RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau - Germany
Gaurav Kaul - AI Systems Architect, Oracle - United Kingdom
Valentino Peluso - Assistant Professor, Politecnico di Torino - Italy
Tomeu Vizoso - Independent NPU driver developer - Czech Republic
Tobias Scheipel - PostDoc, Embedded Architectures & Systems Group, Graz University of Technology - Austria
Tommaso Spagnolo - PhD, Politecnico di Milano - Italy
Satinder Paul Singh - Chief Technology Officer - Germany
Afonso Oliveira - Researcher - Portugal
Christian Fabre - Researcher & Engineer, CEA - France
Ciprian Antoci - Verification Engineer - Sweden
Fabrizio Ferrandi - Associate Professor, Politecnico di Milano - Italy
Michael Zappe - CTO, Pi-Radio - United States
Christos Kotselidis - Professor, The University of Manchester - United Kingdom
Bodo Hoppe - Distinguished Engineer, Hardware Verification - Germany
Fabrizio Magugliani - HPC Practitioner in Active Retirement - Italy
Yuning - Founder of Various RISC-V Product Startups - Switzerland
João Bispo - Senior Researcher, INESCTEC & Professor, Unversity of Porto - Portugal
Maksim Jenihhin - Assoc. Professor, Tallinn University of Technology - Estonia
Martin Schoeberl - Professor, Technical University of Denmark - Denmark
Andrea Spitale - Digital Design Engineer, Codasip - Czech Republic
Dave Keeshan - Principle Engineer, Daxzio - Ireland
Jan Zapeca - ASIC design engineer, Tropic Square - Czechia
Andrés Martínez Mera - Engineer - Spain
Rosnel Alejandro Leyva-Cortes - Engineering Student, Columbia University - United States
Konstantinos Iordanou - Senior ASIC Design Engineer,Pragmatic Semiconductor - United Kingdom
Giorgos Dimitrakopoulos - Professor, ECE Democritus University of Thrace - Greece
Harald Pretl - Professor, Johannes Kepler University, Linz - Austria
Olof Kindgren - Digital Design Engineer, Qamcom - Sweden
Theo Theocharides - Professor, University of Cyprus - Cyprus
Yvan Tortorella - Digital IC Designer, Fondazione Chips-IT - Italy
Alberto Macii - Professor, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy - Italy
Sylvain Munaut - FPGA and ASIC design engineer - Belgium
Vijay Janapa Reddi - Professor, Harvard University - USA
Andrés Otero - Associate Professor, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid - Spain
Kasim Sinan Yildirim - Associate Professor, University of Trento - Italy
Filippo Minnella - AI HW/SW architect, NXP - Italy
Emanuel Popovici - Senior Lecturer, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University College Cork - Ireland
Leonardo Viana - Power engineer at ideal Power inc - United States
Sean Patrick O’Brien - Independent EDA Engineer - United States
Theo Theocharides - Professor, University of Cyprus - Cyprus
Tommaso Polonelli - Researcher, ETH Zürich - Switzerland
Yuxuan Zhang - PhD candidate at Mid Sweden University - Sweden
Bowen Wang - Phd Student, imec - China
Luca Cassano - Associate Professor, Politecnico di Milano & Co-Founder, IONION - Italy
D. Mitch Bailey - Open Source EDA developer, ShuhariSystem - Japan
Simon Dorrer - “Research Assistant, Johannes Kepler University” - Austria
Gianvito Urgese - Associate Professor, Politecnico di Torino - Italy
Steven Bos - Associate Professor, University of South-Eastern Norway - Norway
Nick Kossifidis - Principal Research Engineer, ICS/FORTH - Greece
Joachim Rodrigues - Professor, Lund University - Sweden
Ilia Polian - Director,, Institute for Computer Architecture and Computer Engineering - Germany
João Miguel Soares Bedin - Research Engineer - Brazil
Oscar Gustafsson - Associate Professor, Linköping University - Sweden
Johannes Mutter - PhD Student, TU München - Germany
Naina Singhal` - Technologist at University of Auckland - New Zealaand
Daniele Jahier Pagliari - Associate Professor, Politecnico di Torino - Italy
Jorge Lagos - Principal MTS, imec - Belgium
Joselito Isaac P. Morallo - Microelectronics Track Advocate and Application - Philippines
Thorsten Knoll - Researcher, RheinMain University of Applied Sciences - Germany
Nicklaus Thompson - Graduate Student, University of Washington - United States
Marc Stöttinger - Professor, Hochschule RheinMain - Germany
Fernando Domínguez Pousa - FPGA Engineer, GMV - Spain
Thomas Grob - Senior Hardware Architect, Hitachi Rail - Germany
Julian Haase - Research Associate, TU Dresden - Germany
Uri Shaked - Co-founder, Tiny Tapeout - Israel
Aurelio Teliti - Industrial PhD Student, Politechnico di Milano - Italy
Edoardo Patti - Associate Professor, Politecnico di Torino - Italy
Vipul Sharma - IC Design Engineer, Orbit Solutions - India
Goran Mahovlić - Co-Founder, Intergalaktik - Croatia
Santa Di Cataldo - Associate Professor, Politecnico di Torino - Italia
Daniel Keller - ETH Zürich - Switzerland
Jan Pleskac - CEO & co-founder Tropic Square - Czech Republic
Alessio Burrello - Associate Professor, Politecnico di Torino - Italy
Vasil Yorsanov - Student, Purdue University - Bulgaria
Francesco Conti - Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, University of Bologna - Italy
Daniel Große - Professor, Johannes Kepler University Linz - Austria
Frans Skarman - PhD student, Linköping University - Sweden
Sara Vinco - Associate Professor, Politecnico di Torino - Italy
Alessandro Aliberti - Assistant Professor, Politecnico di Torino - Italy
Rohit Prasad - Research Engineer, CEA - France
Marc Reichenbach - Professor, University of Rostock - Germany
Staf Verhaegen - Founder FibraServi BV & Co-founder ChipFlow Ltd. - Belgium
Anton Maurovic - Technical Program Manager, Efabless - Australia
Marco Pagani - Researcher, Fondazione Chips-IT - Italy
Erika Pellegrino - HPC Specialist Leonardo SpA - Italy
Mikael Henriksson - Ph.D. Student, Linköping University - Sweden
Nithin P - Undergraduate Researcher - India
Wladek Grabinski - R&D Manager, MOS-AK Association (EU) - Switzerland
Rafael Neves de Mello Oliveira - Physical Design Engineer & Founder Osiris Group - Brazil
Nuno Miguel Cardanha Paulino - Research Engineer, INESC TEC - Portugal
Pramoda S R - Student, VTU - India
Ates Berna - General Manager - Türkiye
Ates Berna - Managing Partner - Netherlands
Jean-Paul Chaput - Research Engineer, Sorbonne Université - France
Anshul Sharma - Anshul Sharma, Verification Engineer - India
Krzysztof Herman - The Leibniz Institute for High Performance Microelectronics - Germany
Peter Korsgaard - Open source maintainer - Belgium
Kolos Koblasz - Electrical Engineer - Hungary
Rodrigo Nogueira Wuerdig - PhD Researcher - Belgium
Lorenzo Bottaccioli - Associate Professor, Politecnico di Torino - Italy
Saikat Chatterjee - Architect, Engineering Team Lead in Socionext - Germany
Diarmuid Collins - SLICE Semiconductor - Ireland
Müştak Erhan Yalcin - Professor, İstanbul Technical University, Türkiye - Türkiye
Noam Cohen - Co-Founder, keplertech.io - France
Simon Richter - PhD Student, Aarhus University - Denmark
Milos Krstic - Professor and Department Head “System Architecture” at IHP - Germany
Emmanuel Huck - SoC RTL designer, NanoXplore - France
Daniele Parravicini - Digital Designer, Politechnico di Milano - Italy
Aanjhan Ranganathan - Professor, Northeastern University - United States
Riccardo Tedeschi - PhD student, University of Bologna - Italy
Diego Satizabal - Software Architect, Southworks - Uruguay
Gianluca Furano - Data Systems Engineer - The Netherlands
Andreas Koch - Professor, Head of Embedded Systems and Applications Group - Germany
Jonathan Schröter - Doctoral Candidate, Hochschule München University of Applied Sciences - Germany
Tobias Wölfel - Doctoral Candidate, Hochschule München University of Applied Sciences - Germany
Andreas Hager-Clukas - Doctoral Candidate, Hochschule München University of Applied Sciences - Germany
Sajid Mohamed - Lead Systems Architect, DigitalTwin Technology GmbH - Germany
Mauro Olivieri - Professor, Sapienza University of Rome - Italy
Caaliph Andriamisaina - Research Engineer, CEA - France
Lev Denisov - PhD Student, Politecnico di Milano - Italy
Ayandev Barman - PhD student, University of Toronto - Canada
Francesco Antognazza - PhD student - Italy
Angelo Garofalo - Assistant Professor, University of Bologna - Italy
Alex Giulietti - Verification Engineer - Spain
Victor Jung - PhD Student, ETH Zürich - Switzerland
AL SABAGH Ghaith - Master student Analog/RF-IC Design at IIC-JKU - Austria
Mr Steven O’Shea - Research Technician, University of Glasgow - United Kingdom
Davide Rossi - Profesor, University of Bologna - Italy
David Brough-Smyth - FPGA and ASIC design engineer - Australia
Pablo Alejandro Ferreyra - Professor National University of Córdoba, Argentina - Argentina
Leo Moser - Master Student, Graz University of Technology - Austria
Mallikarjun Yeshlur - Student Researcher - India
Christophe Alexandre - CEO, keplertech.io - France
Marie-Minerve Louerat - Co-Founder, Coriolis Foundation hosted by the CNRS Foundation - France
Idriss Drissi Smaili - Student at McMaster University - Canada
Dirk Koch - Professor, Heidelberg University - Germany
Rosnnel David Moncada - RTL Engineer - Colombia
Yen-Chun Lin - Technical project manager, ChipFlow - Spain
Massimo Poncino - Professor - Italy
Ulf Schlichtmann - Professor, Technical University of Munich - Germany
Mo R Fadiheh - Postdoctoral Scholar, Stanford University - USA
Samuel Ellicott - PhD Student, The Ohio State University - United States
Vivek Adi - PhD Researcher, NUS - Singapore
R. Timothy Edwards - CEO, Open Circuit Design - United States of America
Altug Somay - Senior Digital Design Engineer, Analog Devices - Türkiye
Roel Jordans - Eindhoven University of Technology - The Netherlands
Dali Kilani - CTO, FlexAI - France
Alexander Manley - Graduate Computer Architect, The University of Kansas - United States
César Fuguet - Researcher, Inria, TIMA Laboratory - France
Christoph Leitner - Postdoc, ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Duc Han LE - Research Engineer - France
Alessandro Ottaviano - PhD student, ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Koldo Basterretxea - Associate Profesor, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) - Spain
Mickael Fiorentino - ASIC/FPGA design engineer, Thales Alenia Space - France
Michele Benetti - Research Engineer, Dyson - United Kingdom
N. Engelhardt - CEO, YosysHQ - Austria
Jun-ichi OKAMURA - Producer, Planning for semiconductor policy in Japan. - Japan
Miquel Moreto - UPC and BSC - Spain
Mattia Sinigaglia - PhD Student, University of Bologna - Italy
Guillem López-Paradís - PhD Student, Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Spain
Patrick Pelgrims - Researcher MICAS ESAT KU Leuven & Embedded Systems Thomas More - Belgium
Mario Auer - Associate Professor, Graz University of Technology - Austria
Magnus Östgren - PhD Student, Chalmers University of Technology - Sweden
Işıl Öz - Assistant Professor, Izmir Institute of Technology - Turkey
Paul Scheffler - PhD Student, ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Thomas Benz - PhD Student, IIS, ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Philippe Sauter - PhD student, ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Sebastian Frey - PhD Student, ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Nils Wistoff - PhD student, ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Tim Fischer - PhD Student, ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Sergio Mazzola - PhD student, ETH Zürich - Switzerland
Federico Villani - PHD Student, ETH Zürich - Switzerland
Maicol Ciani - PhD Candidate, University of Bologna - Italy
Melika Payvand - University of Zurich - Switzerland
Sergio Saponara - University of Pisa - Italy
Domenico Balsamo - Associate Professor, Newcastle University - United Kingdom
Christoph Studer - Professor, ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Viviane Potocnik - Doctoral Student, ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Sina Arjmandpour - PhD student, ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Matteo Perotti - Scientific Assistant, ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Andreas Burg - Associate Professor, EPFL - Switzerland
Paolo Meloni - Università degli Studi di Cagliari - Italy
Robert Balas - PhD Student, ETH Zürich - Switzerland
Magnus Själander - Norwegian University of Science and Technology - Norway
Gamze Islamoglu - PhD Student, ETH Zürich - Switzerland
Bowen Wang - PhD Student, ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Davide Brunelli - Associate Professor, University of Trento - Italy
Riccardo Rovatti - Professor, University of Bologna - Italy
Diyou Shen - PhD Student, ETH Zürich - Switzerland
Jeppe Hinrichs - Firmware Engineer - Denmark
Anatolii Orlov - Professor, Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute - Ukraine
Andrea Helga Bernardi - PhD Student, University of Bologna - Italy
Matteo Sonza Reorda - Professor, Politecnico di Torino - Italy
Andrea Cossettini - Research Cooperation Manager - Switzerland
Mathieu Luisier - Professor, ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Pedro P. Carballo - Asst. professor, IUMA, Univ. Las Palmas Gran Canaria - Spain
Jaskirat Singh - Robotics Engineer, RIVR Technologies AG - Switzerland
Luca Barbierato - Assistant Professor, Politecnico di Torino - Italy
Javier del Pino - Professor, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria - Spain
Cristian Cioflan - PhD Student, ETH Zürich - Switzerland
SERGIU BOGDAN POPESCU - Software Engineer - Romania
Levi Van der Elst - KU Leuven - Belgium
Tobi Delbruck - Professor, UZH-ETH Zurich - Switzerland
Thomas Parry - CEO,SPHERICAL - Netherlands
Mehrzad Nejat - Postdoctoral Researcher, Chalmers University of Technology - Sweden
Philip Wiese - PhD Student, ETH Zürich - Switzerland
Luca Valente - Digital design engineer - Italy
Martin Harnevie - Engineer, SAMS - Sweden
Daniel Bovensiepen - Principal Research Scientist, Siemens - China
Juan L. Aragón - Professor, University of Murcia - Spain
Emre Neftci - Institute Director Forschugnszentrum Juelich, Professor RWTH Aachen - Germany
Joseph Paturel - Digital Design Engineer, Inria - France
Tallie Caris - Label Signed DJ/Producer - Netherlands
Christopher Reinwardt - PhD Student, IIS ETH Zürich - Switzerland
Luca Bompani - PhD student, University of Bologna - Italy
Konstantin Eyhorn - Student - Germany
Hong Pang - Scientific Assistant, ETH Zürich - Switzerland
Macarena C. Martínez-Rodríguez - Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, IMSE-CNM, CSIC/US - Spain
Jakob Luettgau - Research Scientist, Inria - France
Andrew Wilson - Junior Scientist, Silicon Austria Labs GmbH - Austria
Jari Ronkainen - ICT consultant - Finland
Carles Hernández - UPV - Spain
Dupuis Étienne - Edge AI engineer, Prophesee - France
Piedad Brox Jiménez - Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla (CSIC/Univ. Sevilla) - Spain
Gabriel - signal processing engineer, Analog Devices Inc - Spain
Charlotte Frenkel - Assistant Professor, Delft University of Technology - Netherlands
Eros Camacho-Ruiz - Post-Doc Researcher, Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, IMSE-CNM, CSIC/US - Spain
Gabriele Lodi - Senior Digital IC Designer, Eggtronic - Italy
Paul Hansel - Research Engineer, Karpouzi Consulting - United States of America
Pablo Navarro Torrero - PhD candidate, Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, IMSE-CNM, CSIC/US - Spain
AlessandroVanelli-Coralli - Professor, University of Bologna - Italy
Burkhard Steinmacher-Burow - CEO & co-founder ExpectedIT GmbH - Germany
Sergio Seminara - Senior Verification Engineer, ExpectedIT - Italy
Alberto Gomez Saiz - IC Design Tecnical Lead, Quantum Motion - United Kingdom
Carlos Saccogna - ASIC Digital Designer - Spain
Torsten Grawunder - Senior System Designer / Architect - Germany
Giuseppe Tagliavini - Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna - Italy
Amro Tork - Founder, Mabrains - Egypt
Ilir Shala - Master Student Analog/Digital IC Design at IIC-JKU - Austria
Daniel Amor Martín - Innovation manager and cofounder of RBZ Embedded Logics - Spain