IEEE SSCS “Code-a-Chip” Travel Grant Awards at VLSI 2025
The IEEE SSCS Code-a-Chip Travel Grant Award was created to:
- Promote reproducible chip design using open-source tools and notebook-driven design flows,
- Enable up-and-coming talents as well as seasoned open-source enthusiasts to travel to IEEE SSCS conferences and interact with the leading-edge chip design community, and
- Broaden educational value and accessibility within the open-source chip design community, fostering a broader environment for dissemination, learning, and innovation.
Program Rules
- The program is open to anyone (no restrictions). We run continuously the Code-a-Chip (CAC) competition for ISSCC and VLSI conferences with clear deadlines. IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) membership is encouraged but not required. Teaming is encouraged, but each team must identify a single leader who can travel to VLSI from June 8-12, 2025, to receive the award and participate in networking events.
- Applicants must submit an open-source Jupyter notebook detailing an innovative circuit design using open-source tools. The objective is to disseminate the main ideas and design choices using open-source tools and PDKs in a reproducible manner. Generating a final layout of your circuit is encouraged but not required.
- Examples: inverter, temperature sensor
- Submissions of previous winners: ISSCC’25, ISSCC’24, ISSCC’23, VLSI’24 and VLSI’23
- A jury will evaluate the submissions and select up to 10 winners.
- ❗️Starting from the VLSI 2025 grant, the submission categories and criteria for selecting finalists will be expanded to include creative educational purposes of chip design. This can include:
- innovative uses of Python packages for circuit visualization or generating animations to explain digital (e.g., D flip-flop) and analog (e.g., SAR ADCs) circuits,
- exploring open-source PDKs to explain Figure-of-Merit (FoM) of building blocks with SPICE simulation results that demonstrate the value of FoM (trend, foresight, etc).
- Each submission must contain a suitable open-source license (e.g., Apache 2.0).
- Travel arrangements must comply with the IEEE Travel and Expense Reimbursement Guidelines and awardees must attend the conference in person to qualify for reimbursement.
Program Logistics
- The notebooks must be submitted through a GitHub Pull Request at the SSCS Open-Source Ecosystem Code-a-Chip (OSE) GitHub portal.
- Fork the source repo https://github.com/sscs-ose/sscs-ose-code-a-chip.github.io to your local repo.
- Create a new directory VLSI25/submitted_notebooks/<my_project_name> in your local repo.
- Add your Jupyter notebook to the directory.
- Create a pull request from your local repo to the source repo.
- Notebooks submissions must follow guidelines in How to Apply
- The winners are expected to attend the conference to be recognized for their awards and to present a poster.
- Reimbursement will be provided after the conference when air and accommodation receipts are sent to the conference Treasurer.
Grant Amount
- Travel grants of up to US$500 (for secondary students), up to US$2,500 (for undergraduate students), and between US$1,000-US$5,000 (for graduate students and all others) will be awarded. This award can be used to reimburse travel and a portion of your accommodations while attending VLSI’2025, until the dollar amount is used up.
Program Schedule
- April 23, 2025, 11:59 AM Pacific Time: Notebook submission deadline (GitHub pull request)
- April 30, 2025: Announcement of winners
- May 2-5, 2025: Register for the conference, and obtain a letter for visa application (if needed)
- June 8-12, 2025: Attend the conference