Google partners with SkyWater to enable open source manufacturing of ASICs
I've been following this closely and put a fair bit of time into porting a CAD tool to this new process.I won't be submitting a design at this time.The Google sponsorship comes with a lot of strings attached.  That's okay, "he who pays the piper calls the tune".  Unfortunately unlike MOSIS and IMEC there is no option to pay your own way in order to drop the strings.  Based on MPW charges for other foundries through MOSIS+IMEC the Google subsidy is worth around $5k-$10k per submission [1].  But there isn't any option to pay that amount yourself.One of the most problematic "strings" is the fact that you do NOT get a reserved booking.  This is a big issue because for anything more serious than an undergrad-level "hey I threw a pile of verilog at the place+route tool" the designer time invested will be worth a lot more than $5k-$10k.  But they expect you to invest this with zero guarantee of getting it fabbed, which means that investment can easily get dumped in the trash bin.  Project selection is "random" which is sort of just another way of saying "unaccountable".The other problematic "string" is the Management Engine Padframe [2] they wrap around your design.  You can't touch it or change any part of it, and it sits beteween your design and every single pad that faces the outside world.  This sort of Management Engine garbage is exactly what we need open silicon in order to avoid.  Yet here Google and Skywater and eFabless are sticking it back into the mix.  Oh, by the way, this makes "OpenMPW" totally unusable for any RF work, or any design that needs an analog input.Kinda miffed about all this, especially that they sprung the "Management Padframe" on us two weeks before the tapeout deadline.  That screams to me "this is not for serious designs, please undergrads only thanks".[1] https://europractice-ic.com/schedules-prices/[2] https://github.com/efabless/caravelPS, It's also intensely irritating that you're forced to create a LinkedIn account and must use your LinkedIn account to log in to the MPW upload site.  That is some amateur-grade personal data harvesting there.  Serious MPW providers, like MOSIS who have been doing this for 25 years, give you their PGP key for you to encrypt the GDS with and don't put you at the mercy of deplatforming by LinkedIn for whatever lame reason LinkedIn cooked up this week.