Qamcom joins the EU's open source EDA projects
Huh? ODE4EC? What’s that? Well, it’s a three year EU project to advance the state of open source development tools for chip design, and Qamcom is participating.
Why Europe cares about chips
Let's start by backing up and look at the big picture. When it comes to chip design and manufacturing, Europe hasbeen falling behind the past decades. Recent events, like the 2022 chip shortage that caused European car production lines to halt due to lack of chips and increased hostility between different parts of the world that has tightened export restrictions, have shown that semiconductors are critical infrastructure and that it is of immense strategic value to increase European self-sufficiency.
In 2023, the EU launched the CHIPS Act, a €43B initiative to strengthen Europe's role in the semiconductor ecosystem by making sure we have the knowledge, tools, skills and means to be a stronger voice in the market. The ambition is not to be fully self-sufficient as this would require many times more investments, but an explicit goal is to grow from 8% to 20% market share.
The tools nobody talks about
Chip design is a multifaceted problem that covers everything from raw materials to tooling, IP, skill development, manufacturing and funding. Different sub-projects are trying to cover different parts of this problem.
One specific problem area is the CAD tools, or EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tools as they are typically called. These are highly complex (and often extremely expensive) software tools that are used to design and verify chip functionality before they are sent to production. For several decades this has in practice been an oligopoly led by a handful of companies, mostly outside of European control.
While EDA tools are only one part of a complex supply chain, it is a very important part because without these tools, no new projects are ever being started. Governments have seen the strategic value of these companies and the tools they provide, and over the past few years export restrictions have been put in place from time to time in an attempt to curb chip development by other nations. This has in turn made the EU, and sensitive European industries like space and defense, a bit worried that there might be pressure also on them.
What ODE4EC actually is
Luckily, there are other tools that can't be taken away, namely open source tools. The EU has acknowledged this fact and decided to start by investing €20M in open source EDA tools through the ODE4EC umbrella project.
ODE4EC is in itself not an actual project but is further divided into ODE4EC-AMS for working on analog/mixed-signal tooling, ODE4EC-DIG for working on digital tooling and ODE4EC-PIV for working on tools to improve productivity, interoperability and verification. Qamcom is participating in the latter two projects.
The project start was June 1, which means that the project will end May 31, 2029.
What we're contributing
Qamcom has already proven itself by working on many open source silicon projects and we believe that they will play an increasingly important role to enable innovative startups and make larger companies work more efficiently. Our ambition of participating in the ODE4EC project is to further strengthen our position in the ecosystem and be the go-to partner for some of the tools being developed.
In this project, our main contributions will be work on improving FuseSoC and Edalize, a pair of tools used for managing IP cores and interfacing EDA tools, building on work we have previously done. Qamcom will also have two minor contributions in other areas — an updated EDA tool benchmarking solution and a graphical block-level application based on the IP-XACT standard, both projects together with Joseki.
Looking further ahead, the EU recently presented an updated CHIPS Act 2.0 where open source was an explicit focus area, so we believe that the interest, funding opportunities and commercial interest will only grow over time and we are in a good place to position Qamcom as one of the main players in the field.
Wish us good luck and please get in touch if you are curious and want to learn more.