It’s been a hectic and fruitful week. After publishing our idea of SiroHub to a wider audience, we’ve received a lot of attention most of which has been very positive. Thank you for that. There were also relevant comments and questions that we feel deserve answers in this or in coming posts.
Those who already are familiar with microchip development know that the full process from specifications to a packaged chip is not a short one. However, it is a process that consists of operations run by EDA tools with defined inputs and outputs, therefore it can be harmonized and even automated, to some extent. Without luxury of having e.g. in-house CAD team the environment setup can be an overwhelming task.
SiroHub lessens the pain of setup and maintenance, so that the user can concentrate on the actual design work. We are not developing our own EDA tools, but integrating existing ones, commercial and open, into a harmonized composition which enables flow execution and task splitting.
SiroHub Open will have open EDA tools available. However, we’ve started discussions with EDA vendors in hopes of on-demand licensing. First responses are encouraging.
SiroHub Enterprise is dedicated for the customer and so are the EDA licenses which they need to bring along. Ideally on-demand licenses could be used here as well.
Siroic is today at a stage where we are looking for funding to guarantee development of SiroHub to releasable level. In case the funding round is successful, we release first SiroHub Open which can be used free of charge with some restrictions. SiroHub Enterprise pilot project will follow later this year.
As some of you pointed, SiroHub solves only half of the problem. This is all true. SiroHub is only one of the elements towards more open and affordable chip development as far as it goes in digital format. Manufacturing will remain as a task of a silicon factory. However, we have plans to partner with some of them to enable the end-to-end development. How to use the chip eventually in a device is another story.
Opening up microchip development for everyone requires some serious collaboration. It cannot be done alone but together with partners, community and investors. Siroic wants to be part of this revolution with SiroHub.