ArtistIC: An Open-Source Toolchain for Top-Metal IC Art and Ultra-High-Fidelity GDSII Renders

TL;DR

The paper tackles the challenge of creating outreach-friendly, high-fidelity visualizations for open-source ASIC designs in the absence of working prototypes. It introduces ArtistIC, an open-source toolchain that embeds top-metal artwork into GDSII layouts via a Gdspy-based translation and renders ultra-high-fidelity, gigapixel-scale images through a tile-based workflow. Key contributions include a 2024gdspy-based artwork translation script, a tile-based high-resolution rendering pipeline, and a RISC-V SoC case study that demonstrates poster-scale visuals and scientific utility. The framework enables branding of ASIC layouts and provides rigorous visual analysis support to facilitate dissemination, collaboration, and discussion in the research community.

Abstract

Open-source projects require outreach material to grow their community, secure funds, and strengthen their influence. Numbers, specifications, and facts alone are intangible to uninvolved people; using a clear brand and appealing visual material is thus ample to reach a broad audience. This is especially true for application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) during the early stages of the development cycle without running prototype systems. This work presents ArtistIC, an open-source framework to brand ASICs with top-metal art and to render GDSII layouts with ultra-high fidelity reaching render densities below 25 nm/px and gigapixels-scale resolutions.

Figures (7)

• Figure 1: The ArtistIC toolflow.
• Figure 2: Klayout render
• Figure 3: ArtistIC render
• Figure 4: Wall-spanning poster
• Figure 6: Linux-capable SoC sauter2024insights