ArtistIC: An open-source toolchain for top-metal IC art and ultra-high-fidelity GDSII renders
- Thomas Benz
- tbenz@iis.ee.ethz.ch
- Ph.D. student Digital Systems and Circuits Group, IIS, ETH Zürich
Downloads
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 gigapixel-scale resolutions. Further, ArtistIC can export these generated high-fidelity renders to an OpenStreetMap database, allowing people to browse the ASIC design down to the standard-cell level with just a web browser.
Software
General information
- Repository: https://github.com/pulp-platform/artistic
- PNG logo source: https://github.com/pulp-platform/artistic/blob/main/examples/mlem/mlem_logo.png
- Final render of the chip, including generated logo: https://github.com/pulp-platform/artistic/blob/main/examples/mlem/mlem_render.jpg
- OpenChipMaps: https://iis-people.ee.ethz.ch/~tbenz/map
References
Whitepaper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.02626