SoC Labs to lead UK System-on-Chip Design Accelerator

The  UK AI Hardware Plan was announced on June 9th at London Tech Week. SoC Labs is pleased to be part of this announcement and will lead the UK System-on-Chip Design Accelerator.   The Plan announces measures to increase UK chip design capability and for SoC Labs that involves activities to provide "access to design and tape-out capability in the research community through the System-on-Chip Design Accelerator, providing access to a SoC design platform and Arm IP for UK researchers.”

The UK System-on-Chip Design Accelerator aims to address challenges that have been identified in UK workforce development, especially the gap between core foundation skills provided by traditional academic teaching and the practical application skills needed by industry. It will develop talent by working on industrially relevant, real world chip and artificial intelligence design challenges. SoC Labs will provide support to academic groups and start-ups,  including how to build and use reference designs – tested, validated ‘blueprints’ for systems which can be used integrate additional IP to allow new innovative chip designs. A key element will also be facilitating prototype fabrication for new semiconductor products. We already plan to tape out the megaSoC reference design at the advanced 16nm node. This will meet some of the issues highlight to Government in the submission to the Council for Science and Technology: advice on building a sovereign AI chip design industry in the UK in terms of … “giving students experience with advanced 16nm and 7nm PDKs and fabrication processes”

This SoC Labs led activity will deliver the silicon proven reference designs and EDA tool flows to help build future SoC design talent.   

It will work closely with other UK activities such as ChipStart and the Chip Design Enablement Programme to support access to chip design capability for SMEs. 

The University of Southampton press release on this activity is here.