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Welcome to the OpenROAD Flow Scripts documentation!

The OpenROAD ("Foundations and Realization of Open, Accessible Design") project was launched in June 2018 within the DARPA IDEA program. OpenROAD aims to bring down the barriers of cost, expertise and unpredictability that currently block designers' access to hardware implementation in advanced technologies. The project team (Qualcomm, Arm and multiple universities and partners, led by UC San Diego) is developing a fully autonomous, open-source tool chain for digital SoC layout generation, focusing on the RTL-to-GDSII phase of system-on-chip design. Thus, OpenROAD holistically attacks the multiple facets of today's design cost crisis: engineering resources, design tool licenses, project schedule, and risk.

The IDEA program targets no-human-in-loop (NHIL) design, with 24-hour turnaround time and zero loss of power-performance-area (PPA) design quality.

The NHIL target requires tools to adapt and auto-tune successfully to flow completion, without (or, with minimal) human intervention. Machine intelligence augments human expertise through efficient modeling and prediction of flow and optimization outcomes throughout the synthesis, placement and routing process. This is complemented by development of metrics and machine learning infrastructure.

The 24-hour runtime target implies that problems must be strategically decomposed throughout the design process, with clustered and partitioned subproblems being solved and recomposed through intelligent distribution and management of computational resources. This ensures that the NHIL design optimization is performed within its available [threads * hours] "box" of resources. Decomposition that enables parallel and distributed search over cloud resources incurs a quality-of-results loss, but this is subsequently recovered through improved flow predictability and enhanced optimization.

Learn more about the project at our website and our resources page here.

Getting Started with OpenROAD Flow Scripts

OpenROAD Flow is a full RTL-to-GDS flow built entirely on open-source tools. The project aims for automated, no-human-in-the-loop digital circuit design with 24-hour turnaround time. For more information, refer to our repository README.

See these [tips](user/FAQS.md#how-do-i-get-better-search-results) to help improve your search results.

Setup

Supported Operating Systems

Note that depending on the installation method, we have varying levels of support for various operating systems.

Legend:

  • Y for supported.
  • - for unsupported.
Operating System Local Installation Prebuilt Binaries Docker Installation Windows Subsystem for Linux
Ubuntu 20.04 Y Y Y -
Ubuntu 22.04 Y Y Y -
CentOS 7 Y - Y -
CentOS 8 Y - Y -
Debian 10 Y Y Y -
Debian 11 Y Y Y -
RHEL Y - Y -
Windows 10 and above - - Y Y
macOS Y* - Y - 
For macOS, local compilation for the modules `par` and `mpl2` are not
fully supported due to an upstream issue with `or-tools`. We recommend
Docker installation wherever possible.

System Requirements

To build the binaries and run gcd through the flow:

  • Minimum: 1 CPU core and 8GB RAM.
  • Recommended: 4 CPU cores and 16GB of RAM.
`gcd` is a small design, and thus requires less computational power.
Larger designs may require better hardware.

Build or Installing ORFS Dependencies

We support four major ways of installation:

You may also choose use the build script to customise your build process. See more in the next section.

Build Command and options
./build_openroad.sh --help

Options for ./build_openroad.sh script

Argument Description
-h or --help Print help message.
-o or --local Build locally instead of building a Docker image.
-l or --latest Use the head of branch --or_branch or 'master' by default for tools/OpenROAD.
--or_branch BRANCH_NAME Use the head of branch BRANCH for tools/OpenROAD.
--or_repo REPO_URL Use a fork at REPO-URL (https/ssh) for tools/OpenROAD.
--no_init Skip initializing submodules.
-t N or --threads N Use N cpus when compiling software.
-n or --nice Nice all jobs. Use all cpus unless --threads is also given, then use N threads.
--yosys-args-overwrite Do not use default flags set by this scrip during Yosys compilation.
--yosys-args STRING Aditional compilation flags for Yosys compilation.
--openroad-args-overwrite Do not use default flags set by this script during OpenROAD app compilation.
--openroad-args STRING Aditional compilation flags for OpenROAD app compilation.
--lsoracle-enable Compile LSOracle. Disable by default as it is not currently used on the flow.
--lsoracle-args-overwrite Do not use default flags set by this scrip during LSOracle compilation.
--lsoracle-args STRING Aditional compilation flags for LSOracle compilation.
--install-path PATH Path to install tools. Default is ${INSTALL_PATH}.
--clean Call git clean interactively before compile. Useful to remove old build files.
--clean-force Call git clean before compile. WARNING: this option will not ask for confirmation. Useful to remove old build files.
-c or --copy-platforms Only applicable for docker builds. Copy platforms to inside docker image.
--docker-args-overwrite Only applicable for docker builds. Do not use default flags set by this script for Docker builds.
--docker-args STRING Only applicable for docker builds. Additional compilation flags for Docker build.

Running a Design

Sample design configurations are available in the designs directory. You can select a design using either of the following methods:

  1. The flow Makefile contains a list of sample design configurations at the top of the file. Uncomment the respective line to select the design.
  2. Specify the design using the shell environment. For example:
make DESIGN_CONFIG=./designs/nangate45/swerv/config.mk
# or
export DESIGN_CONFIG=./designs/nangate45/swerv/config.mk
make

By default, the gcd design is selected using the nangate45 platform. The resulting GDS will be available at flow/results/nangate45/gcd/6_final.gds. The flow should take only a few minutes to produce a GDS for this design. We recommend implementing this design first to validate your flow and tool setup.

Design exploration and automatic parameter tuning

AutoTuner is an automatic parameter tuning framework capable of performing automatic parameter tuning framework for commercial and academic RTL-to-GDS flows. The two main functionalities that AutoTuner provides are:

  • Automatic hyperparameter tuning framework for OpenROAD-flow-scripts
  • Parametric sweeping experiments for OpenROAD-flow-scripts
Refer to the detailed [instructions here](./user/InstructionsForAutoTuner.md) for AutoTuner.

Adding a Design

To add a new design to the flow directory, refer to the document here.

Platforms

OpenROAD-flow-scripts supports Verilog to GDS for the following open platforms:

  • ASAP7
  • Nangate45 / FreePDK45
  • SKY130

These platforms have a permissive license which allows us to redistribute the PDK and OpenROAD platform-specific files. The platform files and license(s) are located in platforms/{platform}.

OpenROAD-flow-scripts also supports the following proprietary platforms:

  • GF12
  • TSMC65LP

The PDKs and platform-specific files for these kits cannot be provided due to NDA restrictions. However, if you are able to access these platforms, you can create the necessary platform-specific files yourself.

Once the platform is set up, you can create a new design configuration with information about the design. See sample configurations in the design directory. Refer to the Flow variables document for details on how to use environment variables in OpenROAD-flow-scripts to configure platform and design specific parameters.

Adding a Platform

Refer to the platform bring up documentation to set up a new platform for OpenROAD-flow-scripts.

Implement the Design

Run make to perform Verilog to GDS. The final output will be located at flow/results/{platform}/{design_name}/6_final.gds

Miscellaneous

Smoke-test harness for top-level Verilog designs

  1. Drop your Verilog files into designs/src/harness
  2. Start the workflow:
Start with a very small submodule in your design that has only a few pins.

make DESIGN_NAME=TopLevelName DESIGN_CONFIG=$(pwd)/designs/harness.mk

How to contribute

If you are willing to contribute, see the Getting Involved section.

If you are a developer with EDA background, learn more about how you can use OpenROAD as the infrastructure for your tools in the Developer Guide section.

How to get in touch

We maintain the following channels for communication:

See also our FAQs.

Code of conduct

Please read our code of conduct here.

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