IEEE SSCS Open-Source Ecosystem Code-a-Chip Travel Grant Awards for ISSCC 2027
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 emerging designers and experienced open-source contributors to attend IEEE SSCS conferences, engage with the chip-design community, and build professional networks,
- Broaden educational value and accessibility within the open-source chip design community, fostering a more inclusive environment for dissemination, learning, and innovation.
Program Rules
- The program is open to anyone (no restrictions). IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) membership is encouraged but not required.
- Code-a-Chip competitions are held for the ISSCC and VLSI Symposium conferences, with submission deadlines for each.
- Team submissions are encouraged; however, each team must designate one representative to receive the award and attend ISSCC 2027 in person.
- Applicants must submit an openly licensed Jupyter notebook demonstrating an innovative circuit design or educational project developed using open-source tools and, where applicable, open-source process design kits.
- The notebook should clearly communicate the project’s main ideas, design decisions, methodology, results, and instructions for reproducibility. Generating a final circuit layout is encouraged but not required.
- Eligible submissions may include, but are not limited to:
- Innovative circuit-design projects, such as inverters and temperature sensors.
- Creative educational uses of Python packages for circuit visualization or animation, including explanations of digital circuits, such as D flip-flops, and analog circuits, such as successive-approximation-register analog-to-digital converters.
- Exploration of open-source PDKs and SPICE simulations to demonstrate relevant figures of merit for circuit building blocks, including gain, bandwidth, power consumption, noise, linearity, or other appropriate performance metrics.
- Applicants are encouraged to review submissions from previous Code-a-Chip award recipients for examples of successful projects.
- Each submission must include an appropriate open-source license, such as the Apache License 2.0.
- Award recipients must comply with the applicable IEEE travel and expense reimbursement policies and attend ISSCC 2027 in person to qualify for reimbursement.
Examples
You can find past submissions on GitHub:
https://github.com/sscs-ose/sscs-ose-code-a-chip.github.io
You can find past submissions on GitHub:
https://github.com/sscs-ose/sscs-ose-code-a-chip.github.io
Evaluation
A jury of technical experts will evaluate all eligible submissions. Up to 10 applicants or teams may be selected to receive travel grants.
Grant Amount
Travel grants will be awarded according to the applicant’s category:
- Secondary-school student: Up to US$500
- Undergraduate student: Up to US$2,500
- Graduate student or other eligible applicant: US$1,000–US$5,000
Grants may be used to reimburse eligible airfare, ground transportation, and accommodation expenses, subject to IEEE travel and expense policies. Reimbursement will be limited to documented eligible expenses and will not exceed the recipient’s approved grant amount.
Award recipients are responsible for retaining and submitting all required receipts and supporting documentation. Reimbursement will be processed after the conference upon receipt and approval of the required documentation.
Award recipients are responsible for retaining and submitting all required receipts and supporting documentation. Reimbursement will be processed after the conference upon receipt and approval of the required documentation.
Program Logistics
Submissions must be made via a pull request to the IEEE SSCS Open-Source Ecosystem Code-a-Chip repository on GitHub.
- Fork the official Code-a-Chip repository to your GitHub account: [https://github.com/sscs-ose/sscs-ose-code-a-chip.github.io]
- Create the following directory within your forked repository: ISSCC27/submitted_notebooks/<project_name>/
- Place all files associated with your project inside this directory. Do not add, update, or modify files outside your project directory, as doing so
Collaboration Space
- “Code-a-Chip” room in fossi-chat.org is available to discuss your submissions or ask about tools issues etc. Visit https://element.fossi-chat.org/ , create your account, and join the room “Code-a-Chip”
Submission deadline:
October 31, 2026, 11:59 AM Pacific Time