The Department of Defense has started soliciting proposals for a digital engineering platform to accelerate the development of integrated circuits, or ICs.
Boosting IC Development
The Defense Innovation Unit said the DOD is seeking contractors capable of creating a digital engineering platform that can expedite the design and validation of analog integrated circuits as well as mixed-signal, photonic and hybrid chips in interposers or other heterogeneous integration structures.
Under the Chipweave project, the selected vendor should build a platform capable of design automation to reduce reliance on manual processes and verification of IC design and behavior. The platform should also have flexible Field Programmable Analog Arrays that can be compatible with various applications. In addition, it should be able to redesign or reverse-engineer analog circuits.
Interested vendors may send their proposals by Feb. 21.
The DOD intends to address the challenges in designing electronic chips, which are essential for legacy and modern military systems. Some applications still require the performance attributes of analog, mixed-signal, photonic and hybrid chips. These chip designs are hindered by lengthy design cycles and frequent resigns while manual design processes are repetitive, susceptible to errors and take too much time.
The project is meant to deal with these issues to boost the design process and reduce errors.
