Toward an Open-Source Digital Flow

TLDR

The development of open‑source, self‑driving design tools is a “moon shot” with numerous technical and cultural challenges. The authors describe the planned Alpha release of OpenROAD, an open‑source end‑to‑end silicon compiler, aiming to democratize hardware design by reducing cost, expertise, schedule, and risk barriers for system designers. The flow integrates a compatible set of open‑source tools covering logic synthesis, floorplanning, placement, clock‑tree synthesis, global routing, detailed routing, as well as analysis and support tools for static timing analysis, parasitic extraction, power‑integrity analysis, and cloud deployment. The authors report several lessons learned and challenges encountered in developing open‑source EDA tools and flows.

Abstract

We describe the planned Alpha release of OpenROAD, an open-source end-to-end silicon compiler. OpenROAD will help realize the goal of "democratization of hardware design", by reducing cost, expertise, schedule and risk barriers that confront system designers today. The development of open-source, self-driving design tools is in and of itself a "moon shot" with numerous technical and cultural challenges. The open-source flow incorporates a compatible open-source set of tools that span logic synthesis, floorplanning, placement, clock tree synthesis, global routing and detailed routing. The flow also incorporates analysis and support tools for static timing analysis, parasitic extraction, power integrity analysis, and cloud deployment. We also note several observed challenges, or "lessons learned", with respect to development of open-source EDA tools and flows.