FOSSSC: A Free, Open-Source Software Stack Cluster for Digital System Design

Chip design tools play an important role in the semiconductor industry, affecting production costs, accessibility, and innovation. Traditional commercial chip design tools have high licensing fees which cause innovation barriers and slow down the progress of smaller entities. However, in the last few years, advancements have been made in open-source chip design tools, supported by initiatives such as RISC-V and DARPA funding. These chip design tools target important issues like secure and specialized hardware design and encourage cooperation among worldwide innovators to provide alternatives to traditional expensive tools. However, a cloud-based cluster that supports end-to-end chip design using open-source hardware and software solutions is necessary to realize its full potential. In this work, we propose a Free Open-Source Software Stack-based Cluster (FOSSSC) to support open-hardware-based chip design. The proposed system provides end-to-end chip design and software development solutions and gives accessibility to open-source tools using cloud platforms and high-performance computing. The FOSSSC provides a globally accessible open-source digital system design software stack including design, verification, simulation, and programming.