The IKC will develop re-usable reference designs and design patterns for the design of systems involving Heterogeneous Integration of semiconductors.
It will adopt a secure by design architectural approach to such systems. The UK Government has made secure by design a strategic priority such that new systems incorporate effective security practices with a specific focus on Digital Security by Design (DSbD) by improving the foundations of digital computing infrastructure by creating new, more secure hardware and software ecosystems.
- Compute sub-system design and hardware to block cyber vulnerabilities.
In the context of computing hardware recent activities have considered critical memory-safety vulnerabilities in Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISC) that are the core of many electronic systems. The UK activity has focused on Capability Hardware, a concept that has genesis in IBM's Future Systems work in the early 1970s and that was manifested in the System/38 hardware architecture. Work by the University of Cambridge along with others developed the Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions ("CHERI") Instruction-Set Architecture. Arm designed the Morello prototype system-on-chip (SoC) to integrate the CHERI concepts to improve security at the hardware level to block cyber vulnerabilities.
The IKC will support the heterogenous nature of the semiconductor ecosystem, including those designers that are looking to adopt the movement to open-source IP and toolchains and those that see value from licensed IP and commercial Electronic Design Automation work flows.
- IP in a heterogenous system
In almost every domain the world is a mix of freely available open material and material that is protected with restrictions on use. In heterogenous systems the same is likely. Designers have a choice.
The IKC will build collaborations with the major EDA companies and existing commercial IP vendors. It will ensure the re-usable reference designs can be instantiated and used in commercial work flows. The IKC will work closely with the open source community and contribute where possible to open source projects. It will ensure the re-usable reference designs can be instantiated and used in open source work flows. The IKC will respect IP rights whatever there form.
The reusable design assets will be made available as appropriate open IP along with targeted supporting, know-how and skills training for the UK community.
The long term commitment the UK is making in establishing the IKC will mean that Core Design engineers act as the maintainer of last resort to ensure the IKC Design Commons assets remain current against evolving needs and changes in IP/tool vendor offerings and manufacturing pathways.
- Developing and Maintaining the Design Commons
The IKC will take an agile approach to the development and delivery of core Design Commons consisting of reusable system architectures, design patterns, reference designs and design workflows.
The Design Commons will be well documented to ensure practical knowledge is captured in a form reusable by the UK design community and as a basis for IKC developed skills and training activities.
The aim of the IKC will be to integrate the Design Commons into existing and planned UK e-infrastructure investments in semiconductor design.
Our development process will be in the open and more details will be provided as we build out the IKC.
The IKC aims to offer proven reusable system architectures and reference designs. These reusable designs will need to show how the many 'whole system view' design challenges can be addressed in developing a HI based systems design.
- Whole System View
There are a growing number of considerations needing to be addressed in the electronic systems design process. Such challenges include, design for test, power management to ensure low energy consumption, thermal effects, lifetime monitoring, resilient supply chains and embedding sustainability into the product as part of the design process.
A goal of the IKC is to pull these many design-related threads together via a carefully curated set of Design Commons for HI integration.
Below are summaries of various design commons associated with CHIMES.