Open Source Processors -- Google wants to fab them for you

Haw! You clicked on the clickbait. 

No, wait, this is real!  Google apparently wants to help foster open sourced processors.   Candidate projects are then uploaded to a certain Github repository, and Google will curate the ones it will fab from submissions, if there's enough interest from enough submissions.
The project is headed by Google's Tim Ansell.  A fab has been chosen, and first run would be in November 2020, and another run planned in 2021.

https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/03/open_chip_hardware/

There are caveats, the first one being well, expected:

• the design must be public and open source
• The process is constrained to 130nm (a.k.a.: 0.13um)
• The die is no larger than 10mm squared
• At least 40 groups must participate with submissions
• Google will select from the submissions, it's not a guarantee to build
• Merely 100 samples of each project would be made

Project Announcement:

https://fossi-foundation.org/2020/06/30/skywater-pdk

Vidja:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EczW2IWdnOM

Presentation Slides:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRtwZPc8ykkkgtUkHkoJZrP9jKOo3FYdKqbg-So0ic6_kx7ha1vHnxrWmuxWkTc9GfC8xl0TfEpMLwK/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

Thoughts? Comments? Are you hyped?  Is there a project you really hope benefits from this?

this is just crowdsourcing design. like when mountain dew has a "contest" to design their new t-shirt, and the prize is.. a free t-shirt! saves the megacorp money

they will absolutely figure out a way to be evil with this on day 2

This isn't surprising to me. Google is one of the partners of lowRISC as well. https://www.lowrisc.org/

Open to the core

lowRISC is a not-for-profit company with a full stack engineering team based in Cambridge, UK. We use collaborative engineering to develop and maintain open source silicon designs and tools.

lowRISC Projects
Our engineering team works on various projects, some hosted at lowRISC and some which are lead elsewhere. We bring full stack open source silicon experience and work as part of the open hardware ecosystem.
OpenTitan

The OpenTitan project is stewarded by lowRISC and is a partnership with Google, ETH Zürich, G+D Mobile Security, Nuvoton Technology and Western Digital. This effort sets a new bar for transparency in trusted silicon, and lowRISC is proud to serve as both steward and not-for-profit engineering contributor to OpenTitan.

CHRSTPHRR TIPPED 5 CORAL FOR THIS POST

Google started out with custom spec'ing PSUs in datacenters for their racks and racks of servers so they could get well north of 90% efficiency, having their finger in a few pies for chip designs only makes sense if you're wanting to innovate to push the state of the art ahead.