UC San Diego is strengthening U.S. semiconductor innovation and workforce development

As the U.S. works to rebuild its semiconductor manufacturing strengths — while maintaining strengths in microelectronics design — interlocking national innovation ecosystems are rising to meet the moment. The University of California San Diego is playing key roles in many of these semiconductor innovation ecosystems, and one of the campus leaders is Andrew B. Kahng, distinguished professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Engineering, and of Electrical and Computer Engineering, at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

Kahng is driving innovation in both research and education, with a long-standing focus on electronic design automation (EDA) tools and technologies. His efforts to accelerate research breakthroughs, and to prepare the next generation of chip designers and microelectronics innovators, often go hand in hand.

Semiconductor chips are the backbone of modern technologies used in everyday life. Often smaller than a fingernail, these chips power everything from smartphones and medical devices to cars and data centers. Yet despite inventing the semiconductor more than six decades ago, the U.S. now only produces a small fraction of the chips it relies on. With critical technologies increasingly reliant on secure, homegrown chip innovation, revitalizing the nation’s talent pipeline — as well as expanding access to advanced fabrication facilities and design tools — have become strategic priorities.

“Semiconductor technology leadership must span the entirety of design through manufacturing. Reshoring the ability to manufacture cutting-edge chips is just one side of this coin. The U.S. must also ensure that our students, researchers and industrial base have access to the tools that accelerate the design of these chips,” said Kahng, who holds the Endowed Chair in High-Performance Computing at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. “Today, EDA is truly a linchpin technology. My group develops the EDA tools and infrastructure needed to train tomorrow’s chip design workforce for tomorrow’s design challenges — such as 3D ‘chiplet’ based system integration, or the infusion of AI into the design process.”

Kahng, a world-renowned leader in chip design education and research, is part of several major national initiatives that together are transforming how future engineers learn to design and build computer chips. His work is also helping UC San Diego become a driving force in the nation’s growing semiconductor innovation ecosystem, along multiple axes that include democratization of chip design, building a national training infrastructure, and accelerating the next generation of microelectronics manufacturing.

Democratizing Chip Design

Kahng has served as principal investigator of OpenROAD, a nationwide project led by UC San Diego that is making chip design more accessible through free, open-source tools. Launched in 2018, the OpenROAD project — short for Foundations and Realization of Open, Accessible Design — created the first open-source software capable of automating many of the most complex and time-consuming parts of the chip design process. Its autonomous and streamlined workflow can generate a manufacturable semiconductor chip layout in just 24 hours without human intervention. Instead of manually managing dozens of highly specialized tasks, designers can use OpenROAD to move a project from concept to a completed layout in a fraction of the time.

“With OpenROAD, students and researchers can focus more on creativity and experimentation rather than navigating the technical obstacles that traditionally slow down chip design,” Kahng said. “They can also see inside the tool by looking at source code — add their own custom features, or extract design data for machine learning. It opens up a whole new world.”

At UC San Diego, Kahng uses OpenROAD in ECE 260C, a graduate-level electrical and computer engineering course on advanced topics in very large-scale integration (VLSI). In this course, students engage in system-on-chip design using modern open-source tools like OpenROAD, which gives them hands-on experience with real-world design methods.

Universities across the country — including Arizona State University, Brown University, New York University and UC Santa Cruz — have also incorporated OpenROAD into their chip design curricula. The impact is global as well. OpenROAD is being used at dozens of institutions worldwide, including ETH Zurich in Switzerland; the Semiconductor Sector Service Bureau in Australia; and the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, where instructors are planning a series of workshops for underserved students in northeastern India.

OpenROAD was initially supported by $17.2 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and recently received an additional $1.4 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program. This new funding will expand OpenROAD’s collaborative ecosystem; establish governance structures for long-term sustainability; and create new educational pathways for training the next generation of chip designers.

Building a National Training Infrastructure

Complementing his work with OpenROAD, Kahng also serves as co-principal investigator of the NSF Chip Design Hub (Chipshub), a $7 million Purdue University-led effort in which UC San Diego is a key partner. Chipshub is building an online infrastructure to provide U.S. universities access to industry-grade chip design tools, training materials and hands-on learning opportunities.

Over the next five years, Chipshub aims to reach 100+ universities and expand access to EDA tools; laboratory-ready coursework; and “teach-the-teacher” programs that equip faculty nationwide to offer semiconductor design classes. In addition, Chipshub is cultivating a sustainable community of partners, educators and content contributors who are helping to broaden participation in chip design.

Integrating OpenROAD into the Chipshub platform is a key part of this mission. To complement leading-edge commercial EDA tools, Chipshub offers a suite of browser-based tools that support every stage of the chip design process with no installation, complex licensing or specialized hardware needed. OpenROAD is a centerpiece of this tool suite, which gives students, researchers and educators free, frictionless access to chip design and hardware system innovation.

“With OpenROAD and the Chip Design Hub, we are lowering barriers to chip design and expanding access to state-of-the-art tools and training,” Kahng said. “These initiatives are enabling us to build the foundation for a truly national semiconductor education ecosystem and grow the talent pipeline needed to strengthen the semiconductor workforce right here in the U.S.”

Accelerating the Next Generation of Microelectronics

In addition to his educational leadership, Kahng is heading a major research effort through DARPA’s Next-Generation Microelectronics Manufacturing (NGMM) program. A team led by Kahng at UC San Diego has been selected to receive up to $9 million to help develop the next generation of high-performance semiconductor microsystems for national defense and commercial applications. As part of this work, Kahng will lead an academic and EDA development team.

The NGMM program is working to establish a national consortium focused on pure-play foundry directed chip prototyping. Its goal is to enable researchers and companies to validate new ideas more efficiently and accelerate innovation. The advanced semiconductor microsystems created through this program are envisioned to support future systems that are faster, lighter, more compact, and more energy efficient.

UC San Diego’s work is part of a larger $840 million DARPA investment awarded to the Texas Institute for Electronics at The University of Texas at Austin, spanning 32 defense electronics and commercial semiconductor companies and 18 universities across the U.S.

Looking Ahead

“What excites me the most about helping to lead these various efforts is the unifying mission: to provide the scalable, accessible infrastructure that enables the next level and next generation of chip design research and education for the nation,” Kahng said. “And the scary part is how much there is to do, and how fast we need to move.”