Hi,
my 2 cents since I again don't know if I can attend the session:
If I was thinking about funding LS, I would have some questions:
- how does a 50u-in-a-garage process help establish 1u-in-a-lab? Making sure that the garage process is not a dead end.
- will funding help you get back into a lab where you can do CMOS manufacturing (i.e. is money actually the problem here)? If that lab is not INL, which is it?
Other than that, you mentioned the open source toolchain. I'm not sure which one you mean, just making sure you have seen this one since knowing about tool development will probably raise the credibility:
This toolchain actually worked out of the box and gave me a GDS file for my verilog. With the toolchain from opencircuitdesign I gave up after a week of working around bugs and compilation errors. They are also working together with a tool like Magic called klayout that is actually meant to be used by human beings.
Greetings,
Martin