hi all, I was wondering if there is documentation for how the precheck, tapeout jobs work/where they look for files? The video seemed to just instruct users to click "Submit"- I am not planning on using the caravel chipframe/repo so I'm a little unclear what's expected in terms of collateral

Hi @Elam H Day-Friedland, the source code and some documentation for the MPW Precheck can be found in its repo. There is not much documentation on the Tapeout job, but I can quickly summarize what it does: 1. Integrates your conforming user project wrapper GDS into one of our 'frames' (Caravel, Caravan, or OpenFrame; i.e. the padring and SoC if applicable) 2. Runs "fills" (empty areas on all layers are pattern-filled to meet manufacturing requirements) 3. Does final DRC & especially MR ("Manufacturing Required") rule checks to ensure manufacturability. 4. Provides final combined GDS (including fills) for the full die.

I see, thanks! the repo looks like what I was using for- some of my peers previously said they could just upload a GDS to some portal as long as the IO cells were in the correct positions. is that still possible?

The mandatory requirement is one of the following files:

gds/user_project_wrapper.gds         # For Caravel.
gds/user_analog_project_wrapper.gds  # For Caravan.
gds/openframe_project_wrapper.gds    # For OpenFrame.

...preferably as a

.gds.gz

compressed file instead. That GDS represents your own user project area which must conform to our template, in order to overlay the respective (fixed) frame (padring and, in the case of Caravel & Caravan, SoC). So, you don't (and cannot) provide the padring and IO cells, though if you are ordering bare dice you have the option of including additional IO cells inside your user project area that are unrelated to our padring (which will still be there in the fabricated silicon).