An open-source design and simulation environment for highly integrated 2.5D/3D chip systems.
Modern high-performance systems are built by combining heterogeneous chiplets into a single package. The design tools for that packaging step are largely proprietary. DI-PASSIONATE is a publicly funded research project building a free design environment for the packages of integrated multi-chip systems - from 3D structure modelling and electrical/thermal simulation through to automated, goal-driven optimization, using only open-source tools.
The approach is demonstrated on two very different subsystems: a digital accelerator and an analog power amplifier.
| Repository | What it does |
|---|---|
| ORCA | Open RF Integrated Circuit Automation. Simulates RFIC geometries with open-source EM tools and trains AI/ML surrogate models that predict S-parameters for a given geometry in milliseconds instead of hours. |
| COBRA | A Circuit-Level Open-Source Based RFIC AI-Assisted Optimizer. Loads ORCA's surrogate models, runs circuit-level SPICE simulation via Xyce, and optimizes a design against user-defined goals; with optional full-wave EM fine-tuning in AWS Palace. |
The toolchain deliberately depends only on tools anyone can install: Xyce (SPICE simulation), Qucs-S (schematic capture and netlists), gds2palace (GDS to Palace conversion), AWS Palace (full-wave EM), gmsh (meshing), ONNX Runtime (surrogate inference), Optuna (optimization) and scikit-rf (RF network handling).
Start with COBRA if you want to optimize a circuit, or with ORCA if you want to build a surrogate model for your own geometry. COBRA's documentation covers installation, the configuration format, the GUI and the scripting API.
Questions, bug reports and feature ideas belong in the issue tracker of the repository they concern. See CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request, and SECURITY.md for reporting a vulnerability.
DI-PASSIONATE (Open-Source-Entwurfs- und Simulationsumgebung für hoch-integrierte 2.5D/3D-Chipsysteme) runs from May 2024 to April 2027 and is coordinated by Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).
It is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt, BMFTR - formerly BMBF) within the programme Design-Instrumente für souveräne Chipentwicklung mit Open-Source (DE:Sign), with €1.16 million in funding plus a project allowance for the participating universities.
More about the project: elektronikforschung.de · DE:Sign programme