IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Winter 2022 - 75

has expanded to more than 10,000 at
the time of writing, and the Society sponsors
and cosponsors 90-plus Chapters
worldwide. It supports numer ous
conferences, including the following:
■ ISSCC
■ IEEE Symposium on VLSI Technology
and Circuits
■ IEEE Asian Solid-State Circuits
Conference
■ European Solid-State Circuits
Conference
■ IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits
Conference.
In addition, the SSCS is a technical
cosponsor of a broad range of
conferences that focus on various
areas of interest to its membership,
including the International Symposium
on VLSI Technology, Systems,
and Applications, colocated
with the International Symposium
on VLSI Design and Test; Design
Automation Conference; Design,
Automation, and Test in Europe
Conference; Hot Chips: A Symposium
on High-Performance Chips;
IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated
Circuits Symposium; and IEEE
BiCMOS and Compound Semiconductor
Integrated Circuits and Tech no -
logy Symposium.
SSCS sponsors six publications as
complimentary member benefits in
print and electronic formats: JSSC,
IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters, IEEE
Journal on Exploratory Solid-State
Computational Devices and Circuits,
IEEE Open Journal of Solid-State Circuits,
and IEEE RFIC Virtual Journal.
Members receive IEEE Solid-State Circuits
Magazine free of charge. The
SSCS also supports IEEE Design & Test.
-Richard C. Jaeger
-Robert G. Swartz
-Lew Terman
-Harry E. Mussman
T
IEEE SSCS PICO Contestants Cross the Finish Line
This summer, the IEEE Solid-State
Circuits Society (SSCS) launched its
first open source chip design contest
under the umbrella of its Platform
for Integrated Circuit Design
Outreach program (PICO). Beginning
with 61 submissions, a volunteer
jury selected 18 teams from nine
countries to embark on a journey
toward tape out.
The teams and SSCS volunteers
held weekly online meetings over a
three-month period to discuss designs
as well open source tool flow
and tape out logistics (see Figure 1).
These fun gatherings brought together
chip design enthusiasts of
all experience levels, from novice to
veteran, and helped build connections
across several continents. The
contest tapped into the large and
growing ecosystem of open-source
IC design tools and leveraged the
130-nm open-source process design
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSSC.2021.3135176
Date of current version: 24 January 2022
FIGURE 1: Weekly SSCS PICO design contest meetups.
IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE WINTER 2022
75
kit (PDK) that was released by SkyWater
in 2020. With all information
being publicly available, the designers
could openly share and discuss
design and PDK details, which is
usually not possible in IC design.
When the deadline came, 11 of
the 18 teams were ready for tape
out and had worked tirelessly to
pass submission checks. Figure 2
displays the six chips that were sent
for fabrication through Efabless's
ChipIgnite program. Several teams
managed to share the 10-mm2
space
available within each chip harness.
This was yet another benefit enabled
by the open source framework.
Table 1 provides further information
IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Winter 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Winter 2022
