Photonics Technology in Electric Version 9.07

[ar...@freedomphotonics.com]

Hi everyone, 

This is my first time posting to this group. I apologize if my question has already been answered before.

I'm a longtime user of Electric VLSI and have fabricated many chips through MOSIS using the SCMOS rules in the past when I was a student under Dr. R. Jacob Baker. 

I just updated my installation to the latest Electric version 9.07 and noticed there's a new technology added, "photonics". 

However I can't find any documentation on it or any discussion about it in this Google Group. I also notice that it indicates the foundry as TSMC so I'm extra curious now.

Is this a technology that can actually be fabricated with TSMC? When I try to convert the technology to library for editing I get an "Exception Caught" error. 

Can anyone give me any additional information about this technology such as its history and if it has been used for anything before? How can it provided within Electric without any NDAs with TSMC? 

I work at a photonics company now and it would be wonderful if I can use Electric again to do some designs. 

Thank you.

[Gavin Abo]

Maybe the TSMC plugin is needed for this.  The one indicated in the program when you click Help->About Electric, then click Plugins and see "Missing: Technologies (cmos90, tsmc180)".

The ChangeLog.txt in the source code of the repository hints that the developers, like SMR, GVG, JKG, and DN, working on TSMC changes may have this plugin:

http://svn.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/electric/trunk/electric/ChangeLog.txt?view=markup

There is another hint in build.xml of electric-8.00.jar (at http://mirrors.peers.community/mirrors/gnu/electric/ ) which has:

        <jar basedir="." compress="true" jarfile="TSMC90.jar">
 
This suggests that the plugin file may have the filename: TSMC90.jar
 
I asked about the plugin back in 2015 [ https://www.mail-archive.com/electr...@googlegroups.com/msg01026.html ], but I don't remember ever receiving a response back about how exactly one could get it.  So I can only guess that they are not sharing it outside their development circle as it may be providing their paycheck.  If they are sharing outside their group, I suspect that it requires a signed NDA (thus, why the source code for creating the plugin seems to have been stripped from the public release).

[Steven Rubin]

The new "photonics" technology in Electric is not from TSMC and should not have been labeled such. No additional JAR files are needed to use it. The technology is built from a few public-domain devices and is intended only as an example of how Electric can handle photonics. An sample design, using this technology, can be found in the built-in "samples" library. If anyone is serious about photonics in Electric, they will have to reimplement it. But at least they will have this one as a starting example.

   -Steven Rubin