All organizations · GSoC 2026 · Infrastructure and cloud, Artificial Intelligence

The OpenROAD Initiative

Collaboratively building an OpenROAD ecosystem

ORI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides long-term stewardship, governance, and ecosystem leadership for the OpenROAD open-source EDA ecosystem. Our Vision: Making chip design open and accessible to all—building a collaborative ecosystem driven by transparency and shared innovation. Our Mission: To advance and sustain the open-source EDA ecosystem by fostering collaborative innovation across research, education, and industry—transforming ideas into silicon.

python
verilog
c++
tcl
OpenRoad

ASIC design
OpenROAD chip design
Open EDA
Open-source Design
LLM chip design

Project ideas

11 ideas on its 2026 ideas page; of the 10 that state a difficulty: 1 medium, 9 hard. Sizes: 4 medium, 6 large. 21 mentors named.

Code of Conduct and Ethics
OpenROAD – Build, Release & Onboarding Simplification medium hard
OpenROAD - New resizer transformations medium hard
OpenROAD - Incremental Global Routing on CUGR large hard
OpenROAD - Kokkos Migration large hard
OpenROAD - Bazel Migration large hard
OpenROAD - UPF Improvements large hard
OpenROAD-MCP Docker Deployment and Cross-Platform Support with Production-Ready Testing and Quality medium medium
Chipathon Knowledge Hub + “Ask Chipathon” Chatbot for OpenROAD-Based Flows large hard
Integration of eSim with OpenROAD Flow for End-to-End Open Source ASIC Design medium hard
XLS and OpenROAD for PPA-Aware Hardware Generation large hard

Read the ideas page. Ideas are for scope reference; never copy one into a proposal.

History

In GSoC since 2026, 1 year. Projects per year: '26: 3.

On GitHub

14 repositories pushed to in the last year. Main languages: Python (4), Verilog (4), C++ (2), HTML (1), Tcl (1), TypeScript (1).

Links and channels

Website: https://www.openroadinitiative.org
Ideas page: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X6xxUonxgEQ_iD5G5vFp2ZOH1vbkRSspEdYrpSf4khE/edit?usp=sharing
Contributor guide: https://openroad.readthedocs.io/en/latest/contrib/GettingInvolved.html
Source code: https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD
Mailing list: https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD/discussions

go deeper in your terminal

git-into-gsoc org "The OpenROAD Initiative" --shortlist
git-into-gsoc repos "The OpenROAD Initiative"
git-into-gsoc issues --org "The OpenROAD Initiative"

or ask your assistant:
"Which The OpenROAD Initiative repositories merge
newcomers' pull requests, and which beginner
issues are still free?"

Those commands read live data: which repositories merge outside pull requests, and which beginner issues nobody has claimed. Install in two minutes.