The company Zero Asic allows you to design your own processor
Semiconductor startup Zero Asic has announced a ChipMaker platform that enables the rapid assembly of highly customized multi-chip system-in-package (SiP) from well-known existing chips. In this way, this startup practically allows you to design your own processor.
The physical design of modern processors usually takes years and costs tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on the complexity and technology of the process. With the release of its ChipMaker platform, the aforementioned semiconductor company should democratize custom silicon development.
Developing a custom specific integrated circuit (ASIC) from concept to production is too time-consuming and expensive for many startups. So ChipMaker simplifies this process by using chiplet-based designs, hiding the complexity of circuit design and allowing users to quickly and accurately test and modify their custom designs before ordering physical devices.
All this is achieved by using FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) to implement RTL (register transfer level) source code, which describes the way data is transformed as it is transferred from register to register.
ZeroAsicThe Zero Asic platform relies on eFabric, a 3D interposer that enables die-to-die communication that provides near-seamless data transfer between silicon dies within a single package, offering improved energy efficiency and bandwidth compared to traditional chip-to-chip communication. In addition, the platform relies on eBrick, a collection of ready-made 3D chips with so-called Plug and Play (PnP) capabilities.
Details about the technology provided by this company are reported by Tom'S Hardware, and Zero Asic expects the catalog of eBrick chips to expand significantly over time. That, in turn, will allow the ChipMaker platform to become even more sustainable, though it doesn't reveal how it plans to achieve that.