Synopsys Technologies Adopted by California Defense Ready Electronics and Microdevices Superhub

Democratizing Access to Advanced Electronic Design Software

Established by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), the Microelectronics Commons program 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 California DREAMS coalition 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 USC’s Information Sciences Institute. “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—and increasingly complex devices to meet the needs of compute-intense applications like artificial intelligence (AI)—continues 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.