Open Silicon Starts Here: Building an Open-Source FPGA Board and Toolchain

Semiconductor design is often seen as locked behind costly EDA licenses and closed hardware. This talk shows the opposite, using a fully open FPGA stack.

Hardware: building an FPGA board in KiCad around a Lattice iCE40/ECP5, in the style of open boards like iCEBreaker, OrangeCrab and ULX3S, covering power, configuration flash, clocking and I/O.

Toolchain: taking a Verilog design through Yosys, nextpnr and IceStorm/Trellis onto that board, with a short demo.

Semiconductor relevance: the same open flow and skills (RTL, synthesis, place & route, timing) carry over to ASIC design with OpenROAD/OpenLane, the SkyWater/GF180 open PDKs and Tiny Tapeout, giving students and startups in India a low-cost way into chip design.

1. An FPGA board can be designed with open-source EDA (KiCad) and released as open hardware.

2. A completely FOSS toolchain (Yosys, nextpnr, IceStorm/Trellis) takes RTL all the way to a bitstream.

3. FPGA prototyping is a practical first step toward real silicon through open PDKs and Tiny Tapeout, which ties into India’s semiconductor push.