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Democratizing Access to Advanced Electronic Design Software

Established by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), the has four main objectives:

• Foster the lab-to-fab transition of microelectronics innovation in the U.S.
• Enable cost-effective exploration of new materials, devices, and architectures, along with prototyping, in the nation¡¯s facilities to safeguard intellectual property
• Accelerate the transition of new technologies to U.S. fabs
• Expand the nation¡¯s global leadership in microelectronics

The program consists of eight regional hubs that bring researchers and designers together with prototyping capabilities targeted to each particular region¡¯s technical strengths. Last fall, the DoD awarded the University of Southern California (USC), including engineers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and its Information Sciences Institute, roughly $27 million to lead the of research and industry organizations who will focus on accelerating prototyping of RF technologies and processes for 5G/6G and electromagnetic warfare. California DREAMS is the first hub to build out their design enablement for the ME Commons program. They have chosen to adopt Synopsys technologies, including our end-to-end, cloud-based flows for analog, digital, verification, and photonics designs, IP, as well as our U.S.-based accredited design services that we deliver as a Defense Microelectronics Activity (DMEA) accredited trusted supplier to the U.S. DoD. 

¡°A pioneer in silicon to systems design technologies, Synopsys provides a trusted foundation of electronic design automation and IP solutions to help us accelerate lab-to-fab transitions for organizations participating in the California DREAMS hub,¡± said Dr. Stephen Crago, director of California DREAMS and associate director of . ¡°Access to robust design and verification technologies is critical to enabling our hub model to enable rapid semiconductor prototyping to support lab-to-fab transition and domestic capabilities as well as the development of our talent pool.¡±

Secure, On-Demand Cloud EDA Tools Access

Various events, from the COVID-19 pandemic to geopolitical tensions, have highlighted vulnerabilities in the nation¡¯s semiconductor supply chain. Under this backdrop, demand for chips¡ªand increasingly complex devices to meet the needs of compute-intense applications like artificial intelligence (AI)¡ªcontinues to grow. Yet, a looming engineering shortage threatens to stifle innovation. The CHIPS Act injects close to $53 billion into U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, R&D, and workforce. The various Microelectronics Commons hubs that are funded by CHIPS Act dollars aim to fortify the nation¡¯s strength in areas including AI/hardware, secure edge/IoT computing, quantum technology, and commercial leap-ahead technologies. 

As part of the California DREAMS hub, Synopsys will operate in two primary domains: infrastructure enablement with our EDA and IP solutions and services, and innovation projects supporting lab-to-fab acceleration. The demonstrated success of Synopsys Cloud, cloud-native EDA tools and pre-optimized hardware platforms that can be up and running in as quickly as two days, aligns closely with the program¡¯s goals. Its secure, on-demand, pay-per-use access to EDA resources helps to lower design and operating costs. The Synopsys Cloud OpenLink Program enables the flexibility of a multi-vendor environment of EDA, IP, and foundry solutions. 

In the California DREAMS hub¡¯s focus area of 5G/6G, Synopsys technologies can support the development of RF designs with low size, weight, and power (SWaP), efficient signal processing systems, as well as the use of ultra-wide-band (UWB) materials and photonics. For radar and electromagnetic warfare systems, our solutions support the analog front-end of these RF designs along with runtime reconfigurable array (RTRA) processing and UWB materials.