IN Brief:
- Rapidus CORE begins with 17 Design Solution Associates spanning EDA and semiconductor design-service companies.
- The group includes Cadence, Synopsys, TOPPAN, DNP, HCLTech, Infosys, MosChip and Wipro among others.
- Rapidus plans to extend CORE into further categories including EDA, semiconductor IP and other development capabilities.
Rapidus has launched the Rapidus Collaborative Open Rapid Ecosystem, or CORE, bringing 17 design service and semiconductor tool companies into the first phase of an ecosystem intended to connect early chip design with the company’s 2 nm manufacturing programme.
The first group, described as Design Solution Associates, includes Cadence, Synopsys, Dai Nippon Printing, HCLTech, Infosys, MosChip, TOPPAN, Wipro and design service companies across Japan and other Asian markets. Rapidus says the associates will provide engineering resources and act as a bridge between customers and its foundry operation.
Access to an advanced manufacturing process does not by itself give a customer a manufacturable chip. A design team also needs process design kits, verified IP, EDA flows, physical implementation support, packaging assumptions and a route through verification before a completed layout can be released for fabrication.
Rapidus is building its IIM research and manufacturing site in Chitose, Hokkaido around gate-all-around transistor technology for its 2 nm programme. The company has also made shorter development and manufacturing cycle times part of its operating model, increasing the need for a design environment that can feed usable data into the foundry without repeated transfers between disconnected suppliers.
CORE is intended to organise those supporting capabilities around the manufacturing process. The initial Design Solution Associates cover design services and major EDA providers, while Rapidus says later stages will expand into semiconductor IP and other parts of the development chain.
Cadence and Synopsys bring tool flows used for placement, routing, timing closure, power analysis, physical verification and sign-off. Those tools have to reflect the rules of the target process and be qualified against foundry data if customers are to move from logical design to a layout that can be manufactured predictably.
IP availability creates a separate constraint. Processor cores, interfaces, memory controllers, security blocks and high-speed SerDes are often licensed rather than developed from scratch, but each block still has to be available and characterised for the selected process before it can be used safely within a production design.
Design service companies fill another gap where customers lack enough advanced semiconductor engineers internally. Rapidus explicitly links CORE to a shortage of specialist design talent and is using external engineering companies to widen access to the resources needed to begin projects before its manufacturing capacity reaches full commercial operation.
The 17 initial associates span several countries rather than forming a purely domestic Japanese network. That matches Rapidus’ attempt to build a domestic advanced logic manufacturing base while attracting customers outside Japan.
The engineering test for CORE will be whether those companies can work from consistent process assumptions, libraries, interfaces and verification rules. A network of suppliers becomes useful only when the output from one part of the flow can move into the next without creating another cycle of translation, rework or qualification.
Earlier Rapidus partnerships have addressed individual parts of semiconductor development, including work with research organisations and overseas design centres. CORE places a wider structure around those activities by defining an ecosystem through which customers can obtain design support before a project reaches manufacturing.
The current 17-company group is the first layer rather than a complete 2 nm development stack. Advanced packaging, interface IP, test and product qualification all become more important once a design leaves front end implementation, and Rapidus says additional CORE categories will be added as the foundry offering develops.
Whether the ecosystem reduces development time will depend on how effectively those stages connect in practice. Rapidus is attempting to align architecture, IP selection, implementation, verification and manufacturing around one process route before its 2 nm service reaches broader production.
