PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 05, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Efabless Corporation, the creator platform for chips, today announced the winners of the third AI Generated Open-Source Silicon Design Challenge. The theme of this contest, "Float the Boat," cleverly echoed the platform's name and challenged participants to extend the Caravel SoC by adding practical and verified AI-powered peripherals.

Equipped with generative AI tools, contestants were invited to showcase their technical skills by crafting a complete Verilog model for their proposed design. The challenge required seamless integration with Efabless' chipIgnite – featuring the Caravel SoC for rapid chip-level development – and OpenLane, the open-source RTL-to-GDS digital design flow.

Neurosynaptic Prowess Takes Center Stage:
First place honors go to EDABK Lab of the School of Electronics and Electrical Engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST). Their ambitious project aims to build a hardware-software co-designed neurosynaptic core, powered by the cutting-edge Spike Neural Network (SNN) architecture.

Three-Phase Powerhouse Takes Second:
Second place is awarded to Emil Goh for his Three-Phase Pulse Width Modulator (PWM) with Dead Time. This design, targeting integration within the Caravel harness, leverages ChatGPT-4 to generate the RTL and aims to control electrical energy efficiently in diverse power electronic systems.

Randomness Reigns in Third Place:
James Timothy Meech's RNG Project secures third place. This design utilizes Amaranth, a Python HDL, to create a hardware-based pseudorandom number generator design. Microsoft Bing Chat served as a valuable knowledge source, guiding the development process. Simulations, Dieharder testing, and Verilog output for Caravel integration round out this impressive project.

A unique dual selection process chose the winners. The community cast their votes for their most beloved designs, while a prestigious panel of industry professionals evaluated entries based on comprehensiveness, documentation, technical merit, and community engagement. Efabless will fabricate the three winning designs on its chipIgnite shuttle with the winners receiving packaged parts and evaluation boards - a value of $9,750.

"We extend our heartfelt congratulations to the winners," said Mohamed Kassem, CTO of Efabless. "We're thrilled to learn about their innovative designs. This contest showcased how tools like ChatGPT, Bard, and others have the potential to revolutionize chip design by automating tedious tasks and empowering engineers to focus on creativity and innovation."

For more detail on the event and the winning designs, please visit www.efabless.com/3aicontest.

About Efabless
Efabless offers a platform applying open source and community models to enable a global community of chip experts and non-experts to collaboratively design, share, prototype and commercialize special purpose chips. Nearly 1,000 designs and 450 tapeouts have been executed on Efabless over the past two years. The company’s customers include startups, universities, and research institutions around the world.

Press Contact
Andrea Vedanayagam
andrea@efabless.com
408.656.4494