4/7/2025 Diya Mehta 2 min read
Written by Diya Mehta
Late last year the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign hosted the Design for America Workshop, an event centered on advancing the National Design Enablement Gateway (DEG). Representatives from academia, national laboratories, start-ups and semiconductor companies collaborated throughout the day to develop recommendations for Natcast, the entity responsible for managing the DEG.
Structured around panel discussions and targeted breakout sessions, the workshop addressed key challenges in the U.S. semiconductor design ecosystem, including access, cost, interoperability of the software design tools, and intellectual property (IP) sharing. Five Special Interest Groups (SIGs) were formed to explore core topics: Interoperability of EDA Tools, Secure User Access to DEG Resources, Coordination Between Design Enablement Programs, IP Libraries, and the Needs of Federal Labs.
Each group identified critical issues and generated concrete recommendations. Participants then voted on priority action items for Natcast, including:
- Developing incentives for EDA tool vendors to offer accessible, affordable tools
- Supporting a sustainable framework for tool interoperability
- Creating standardized NDAs and licensing agreements
- Subsidizing multi-project wafer (MPW) runs for academic institutions
- Defining a minimum viable set of IP and reference flows to pilot DEG operations
The workshop also built upon previous U.S. government strategies, such as recommendations outlined by the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), which was established under the CHIPS for America initiative and drew from international models, including Taiwan’s CIC and Europe’s Europractice. Participants stressed the importance of a secure, cloud-based DEG infrastructure and emphasized the need to include advanced packaging services and workforce development.
Professor Elyse Rosenbaum, one of the workshop’s organizers, said the event served as a rare opportunity for service providers, such as semiconductor foundries and EDA software developers, to share challenges in offering low-cost services to universities, start-ups, and national labs.
"Similarly, those of us in the category of users, e.g., universities, shared our experiences and learned from one another," she added.
She noted that participants across the board reported spending an “inordinate amount of time” negotiating non-disclosure and licensing agreements.
To address this, “we strongly recommended that Natcast draft master agreements that all parties would agree to use,” Rosenbaum said.
A full report with detailed SIG findings and expanded recommendations is available online. The outcomes from this workshop will directly inform a national strategy for building a secure, accessible, and innovative semiconductor design infrastructure in the United States.