The Vyges Edge Sensor SoC Placed Second at ChipFoundry
We built a complete sensor product, took it through an open silicon flow and onto a shuttle, and had it evaluated against other complete systems. The judges placed it second.
September 30, 2026 • By Shivaram Mysore
The Vyges™ Edge Sensor SoC has placed second in the ChipFoundry 2026 Silicon-to-System contest.
The contest drew 49 registrations. The judging panel evaluated 30 repositories, accepted six finalists, and assessed each on technical innovation, verification coverage, documentation quality and feasibility — with a focus on a complete silicon-to-system product, not a block on a tester.
That is the standard we set for ourselves.
A complete product, not a block
The Edge Sensor SoC is a vibration-monitoring chip for predictive maintenance. It sits on the sensor board next to a MEMS accelerometer, computes a 1024-point FFT in hardware, and reports frequency-domain fault signatures — bearing wear, imbalance, loosening — without streaming raw data anywhere.
We built the whole product around it:
- The chip — an Ibex RISC-V core with a hardware FFT accelerator, SPI, UART and an interrupt controller on a TileLink crossbar
- The firmware that runs on it
- A reference PCBA that hosts it, and a mechanical enclosure that makes it a product you can mount on a machine
Through an open silicon flow, onto a shuttle
The SoC is built from declarative specifications that drive integration, verification, implementation and sign-off. It was validated on FPGA with the same RTL before tapeout, hardened with open-source EDA on Sky130 as a complete Caravel user project, and is rebuilt from source by a single CI workflow. All of it is open: github.com/vyges/vyges-edge-sensor-soc.
All finalists were included in ChipFoundry's CI2605 shuttle, which is planned to deliver parts in late November.
Evaluated against other complete systems
Then the work was judged — on innovation, verification, documentation and feasibility — alongside other teams' complete systems.
That is the part that matters most to us. Vyges is a silicon company: the product is the chip, and the tooling we build is the infrastructure that gets it there. The Edge Sensor SoC is what that infrastructure produced, now evaluated by the contest's judges on the same terms as everyone else's.
It is one thing to argue that silicon can be built like software. It is another to build the product, tape it out, and have it judged.
What comes next
When our parts arrive, we move to silicon bring-up — and we will share what we learn.
The same approach is what we are building toward for fab-ready SoC IP for the teams we work with.
Thank you
Thank you to ChipFoundry and the judges for running the contest and for the care that went into the reviews.
Congratulations to SenseEdge ASIC, led by Fidel Makatia, on first place, to NetStream, led by Adithya Santhanam, on third, and to our fellow finalists — Lacerta, Smart Power Fault Analyzer and Secure Logger. It is a good year for open silicon when this many complete systems reach a shuttle.
See the Edge Sensor SoC · The contest · Browse the source · Talk to us about silicon