siliconcompiler

Introduction

SiliconCompiler is a modular hardware build system ("make for silicon"). The project philosophy is to "make the complex possible while keeping the simple simple".

Supported Technologies

Type	Supported
Design Languages	C, Verilog, SV, VHDL, Chisel, Migen/Amaranth, Bluespec, MLIR
Simulation Tools	Verilator, Icarus, GHDL, Xyce
Synthesis	Yosys, Vivado, Synopsys, Cadence
ASIC APR	OpenROAD, Synopsys, Cadence
FPGA APR	VPR, nextpnr, Vivado
Layout Viewer	Klayout, OpenROAD, Cadence, Synopsys
DRC/LVS	Klayout, Magic, Synopsys, Siemens
PDKs	sky130, ihp130, gf180, asap7, freepdk45, gf12lp, gf22fdx, intel16

Getting Started

SiliconCompiler is available as wheel packages on PyPI for macOS, Windows and Linux platforms. For working Python 3.9-3.13 environment, just use pip.

pip install --upgrade siliconcompiler

Converting RTL into DRC clean GDS takes 13 lines of simple Python code.

from siliconcompiler import ASIC, Design               # import python package
from siliconcompiler.targets import skywater130_demo
design = Design("heartbeat")                           # create design object
design.set_topmodule("heartbeat", fileset="rtl")       # set top module
design.add_file("heartbeat.v", fileset="rtl")          # add input sources
design.add_file("heartbeat.sdc", fileset="sdc")        # add input sources
project = ASIC(design)                                 # create project
project.add_fileset(["rtl", "sdc"])                    # enable filesets
skywater130_demo(project)                              # load a pre-defined target
project.set('option','remote', True)                   # enable remote execution
project.run()                                          # run compilation
project.summary()                                      # print summary
project.show()                                         # show layout

[!NOTE] The required files can be found at: heartbeat example

Why SiliconCompiler?

• Ease-of-use: Programmable with a simple Python API
• Portability: Powerful dynamic JSON schema supports ASIC and FPGA design and simulation
• Speed: Flowgraph execution model enables cloud scale execution.
• Friction-less: Remote execution model enables "zero install" compilation
• Modularity: Tool abstraction layer makes it easy to add/port new tools to the project.
• Provenance: Compilation manifests created automatically during execution.
• Documented: An extensive set of auto-generated high quality reference documents.
• In-use: Actively used by Zero ASIC for commercial tapeouts at advanced process nodes.

Documentation

The full reference manual and tutorials can be found HERE.

License

Apache License 2.0

How to Cite

If you want to cite our work, please use the following paper:

A. Olofsson, W. Ransohoff, N. Moroze, "Invited: A Distributed Approach to Silicon Compilation", 59th Design Automation Conference (DAC), 10-14 July 2022, San Francisco, CA, USA. Published, 7/2022.

Bibtex:

@inproceedings{10.1145/3489517.3530673,
  author = {Olofsson, Andreas and Ransohoff, William and Moroze, Noah},
  title = {A Distributed Approach to Silicon Compilation: Invited},
  year = {2022},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 59th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference},
  pages = {1343–1346},
  location = {San Francisco, California}
}

Installation

Complete installation instructions are available in the Installation Guide.

To install the project from source (recommended for developers only).

git clone https://github.com/siliconcompiler/siliconcompiler
cd siliconcompiler
python3 -m venv .venv        # Setup virtual environment
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip    # Update pip
pip install -e .             # Required install step
pip install -e .[test,lint]  # Optional install step for running tests and lint
pip install -e .[docs]       # Optional install step for generating docs

EDA Tool Installation

Installation instructions for all external tools can be found in the External Tools section of the user guide. We have included shell setup scripts (Ubuntu) for most of the supported tools, which can be accessed via sc-install. See the ./siliconcompiler/toolscripts directory for a complete set of scripts and ./siliconcompiler/toolscripts/_tools.json for the currently recommended tool versions.

Contributing

SiliconCompiler is an open-source project and welcomes contributions. To find out how to contribute to the project, see our Contributing Guidelines.

Issues / Bugs

We use GitHub Issues for tracking requests and bugs.

More information

Resources	Link
Website	https://www.siliconcompiler.com
Documentation	https://docs.siliconcompiler.com
Sources	https://github.com/siliconcompiler/siliconcompiler
Issues	https://github.com/siliconcompiler/siliconcompiler/issues
RFCs	https://github.com/siliconcompiler/rfcs
Discussion	https://github.com/siliconcompiler/siliconcompiler/discussions