Qualcomm Joins CHIPS Alliance as Platinum Member

Author: Matt Cockrell, Staff Hardware Engineer at Google and Chair of the CHIPS Alliance Governing Board

I am excited to announce that Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. has joined the CHIPS Alliance as our newest Platinum Member. Qualcomm is a recognized force in wireless technology and compute innovation, and their commitment to open source hardware is a major win for our community. Their engineering expertise will be highly valuable as we continue to drive the creation of efficient, collaborative, and open source chip designs.

Accelerating Open Source Silicon with Qualcomm

The CHIPS Alliance was founded to lower the cost and barrier to entry for hardware development through open source collaboration. By sharing resources and expertise, companies and individuals can work together to build open source CPUs, complex IP blocks, and the crucial EDA software tools required to build them. Qualcomm brings decades of experience designing premium-tier SoCs for mobile, automotive, and data center applications. Their decision to join at the Platinum level highlights the growing importance of the open hardware ecosystem. By adding Qualcomm’s engineering weight to our hosted projects, we hope to see faster innovation in open source RTL designs, verification methodologies, and integrated automated flows.

Welcoming Lu Dai to the Governing Board

As part of this new partnership, I’m pleased to welcome Lu Dai, Vice President of Technical Standards at Qualcomm, to the CHIPS Alliance Governing Board.

Lu is a respected leader in the semiconductor standards community, with a long track record of advancing global compute standards and building meaningful collaboration across industry organizations. His deep expertise in design verification, SoC methodologies, and the complex coordination required between design houses and foundries will be a tremendous asset to our work.

Additionally, Lu brings a practical vision for a more seamless, automated flow between design and manufacturing - one that aligns closely with the CHIPS Alliance mission to make hardware development more accessible and accelerate innovation across the ecosystem.

Looking Ahead

The semiconductor industry is changing rapidly, and the lines between proprietary differentiation and open source collaboration are shifting. With Qualcomm on board, the CHIPS Alliance is better positioned than ever to provide the collaborative environment the industry needs to manage the extreme costs and complexities of advanced-node chip design.

Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Qualcomm and Lu Dai. We look forward to the technologies we will build together.

To learn more about how your organization can get involved with the CHIPS Alliance, visit our Membership Page or join the conversation on our mailing lists.