The limiting factor is your 'building blocks' (component libraries with things their cells, IO and what-have-you)) that your fab (i.e. TSMC) gives to your desig

The limiting factor is your 'building blocks' (component libraries with things their cells, IO and what-have-you)) that your fab (i.e. TSMC) gives to your design software house (e.g. Mentor, Synopsis, Cadence) for a specific process (e.g. $integer-$um|nm CMOS) for a production run is usually built off of heavily NDA'd building blocks locked down by contract[0] (and that's assuming you have the cash to to buy time for that tape out!). Even designing simple stuff without the fab's component libraries for old processes would be a daunting task. (For some context, something circa the Sega Dreamcast era -- 350 nm/4 layers or there abouts -- is well in the realm of what an undergraduate would be able to design with a fair bit of ease for his capstone (senior-year) project is doable by a talented single 4th year with the component libs. Without the tooling, he'd be lost.) I'm sure Adapteva wanted to open source their final files which went to the fab for tape-out, but you could bet your bottom dollar if they did, a take-down letter would be sent to Github and Adapteva would be slammed with a lawsuit. SPICE is/was the original open-source project that came out of UC Berkeley in the '70s if you want to go from zero-to-tape-out on an entirely open source stack but it's no trivial task. http://opencircuitdesign.com/links.html http://opencircuitdesign.com/links.html has some auxiliary resources, and IIRC there's a Linux distribution with a pretty good toolkit with even things like analog simulators for RFIC (though, as the late-great Bob Pease of NatSemi said - "never trust the simulator" ;)). Side-note: Adapteva - your work is fascinating, so much so that I read your entire set of ref docs for the Epiphany. I'm in the Boston area, let me buy y'all a coffee at Diesel as I'd love to pick you brains. -- [0] - (Grey area legality content) - Here's an example of the documentation of the libs you'd be using - normally even these documents are lock&keyed: http://www.utdallas.edu/~mxl095420/EE6306/Final%20project/tsmc18_component.pdf http://www.utdallas.edu/~mxl095420/EE6306/Final%20project/ts... This looks like a masters level thesis project directory by the course number (didn't go to U of T:D) @ 180 nm sizing.