General Grant Funding Goals:   The OpenROAD Initiative (501(c) (3) ) aims to foster Education and Workforce Development  (EWD) programs at scale by lowering the barriers to access and use of open-source EDA software, Chip design training and support for educators and Semiconductor industry users . One of it's key goals is to build a fund which can be used to support EWD programs such as Highschool STEAM Teachers as they teach and deploy the OpenROAD Highschool based courses through a continuous and sustainable educational program.  This fund will support teachers who can submit a grant request to help cover the cost of classroom materials and equipment, course creation and delivery and chip manufacturing costs for student projects.  Our target is a fund of $1,000,000 to support a nation-wide highschool program for OpenROAD based Chip design courses and teacher training.

Specific Classroom Goals:   Our main goal is to enable teachers to fund  hands-on projects of student designs from spec-silicon for an end-end learning experience of the Chip design and manufacturing process. Students will create projects to design chips that they can physically implement and submit for manufacturing on silicon wafers through an MPW shuttle by any of the  U.S based foundries. Students will receive these wafers and be able to test them on boards thereby gaining  practical learning through hands-on interaction.  It is expected that the cost of  a single design submitted for manufacturing on a test wafer is $100-$200 per student design on a mature node- 180nm-130nm.  Student projects can be structured as 1-1 or 1-many ratio of design to student.  Hence the costs range from $1000 - $5000 for a typical class size of 25 students. 

How to Donate: - The OpenROAD Initiative  is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, structured to receive and disburse funds according to the rules and regulations thereof. All donations are tax free and a receipt will be provided to the donor individual or institution.

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