Sumanto Kar
Sumanto Kar did his M.Tech in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research, IIT Bombay and B.E. in Electronics Engineering from Mumbai University. His interests lie in contributing to the open-source EDA tools. He is actively involved with the FOSSEE project, contributing to the development, integration, documentation, and outreach of eSim, an open-source EDA platform used across universities in India. His work focuses on strengthening open technical ecosystems, enabling reproducible engineering workflows, and bridging the gap between academic research and community-driven software development.
IIT Bombay
Assistant Project Manager, FOSSEE
Session
Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools are foundational to hardware innovation, yet access to professional-grade tools remains limited due to cost, licensing restrictions, and steep learning curves. eSim is a fully open-source EDA toolchain developed under the FOSSEE project at IIT Bombay, aimed at democratizing circuit design and simulation for students, educators, researchers, and makers.
This talk introduces eSim as a community-driven open-source alternative for analog, digital, and mixed-signal circuit simulation, built on top of established FOSS components such as ngspice, KiCad, GHDL, Verilator and Python-based tooling like PyQt5. The talk also covers how the tool is becoming portable across different environments, and is now incorporating AI-assisted capabilities to enhance usability, learning, and debugging.. Beyond features, the session focuses on how open EDA ecosystems are built, sustained, and scaled—both technically and socially.
Target Audience
- Open-source developers and contributors
- Students and researchers interested in hardware, EDA, and simulation
- Educators building open laboratory workflows
- Community organizers and maintainers of FOSS projects
- Developers curious about open hardware and open EDA ecosystems
- People with backgrounds in Electrical, Computer Science, AI/ML and related fields.
What to Expect from the Session
Participants can expect:
- A technical overview of eSim’s architecture and workflow
- Demonstrations of circuit simulation pipelines
- Discussion on integration with other open-source tools
- Insights into challenges of maintaining large academic FOSS projects
- Ways developers can contribute—code, documentation, testing, or outreach
Key Outcomes
After the session, attendees will:
- Understand how eSim fits into the global open-source EDA landscape
- Learn how open tools can replace proprietary software in education
- See how government-backed initiatives can accelerate open ecosystems
- Be equipped to adopt or advocate for eSim in labs, courses, or communities
- How Open Source EDA tool like eSim can help everyone to fabricate chips at a very low cost
Links to various project and govt initiatives:
eSim aligns strongly with India’s push toward open digital public infrastructure and self-reliant technology ecosystems. eSim is part of the FOSSEE (Free/Libre and Open Source Software for Education) project. The eSim project aligns with the vision of National Education Policy (NEP 2020), Digital India & Atmanirbhar Bharat and the Indian Semiconductor Mission. The talk emphasizes how open-source communities, academia, and policy can work together to build sustainable engineering infrastructure.