TAPEOUT

Real chips are made of millions of tiny standard cells, wired together by layers of metal thinner than a hair. TAPEOUT hands you the job.

• Place standard cells from the open-source SkyWater 130 nm library (flip-flops, NANDs, XORs, muxes) with their real pin shapes and keep-outs. 

• Route every net across two metal layers: horizontal on one, vertical on the other, with vias to hop between. Touch the wrong wire and it's a short. 

• Ship it. Seal your chip in a package, drop it on a test board and watch it run. It is a logic simulation of the metal you actually drew. Get it wrong and the LEDs flicker, undecided. 

• Optimise. Every chip has targets for wire length, vias and speed. Beat them for three stars, then beat yourself.

Starts with a one-minute tutorial. No chip-design knowledge needed, but if you have some, you'll recognise everything.

This is an early build with 8 chips so far. Tell me what confused you, what you loved, and your best scores in the comments!

Standard-cell names and shapes follow the open-source SkyWater SKY130 PDK (Apache 2.0). Not affiliated with SkyWater Technology.