urish / algofoogle-multi-caravel

Collection of open source ASIC projects targeting GFMPW-1 initially

algofoogle-multi-caravel

This is Anton's repo for individually hardening several projects that will target a single GFMPW-1 submission (GF180 Open PDK).

For more info, see: 0181 § 'What I did'.

NOTE: Whichever gf180-* branch you're on reflects which project you're in, specifically, and all should be branching from gf180-base (which should hopefully be the default).

The idea is that if general updates are required to gf180-base, they should be easy enough to merge to each of the project branches, to keep everything consistent.

Hardening

Say you want to harden one of the gf180-* project branches... let's use gf180-rbz-fsm as an example. Here's a very high-level overview, assuming you already have at least something of a working OpenLane environment (or at least the prerequisites installed; see the original efabless guide for more info, but note that the PDK version in that doco might be outdated):

NOTE: Zero to ASIC VM also redirects certain other things (MGMT_AREA_ROOT, DESIGNS, CARAVEL_ROOT, etc. to subdirectories of ~/asic_tools/caravel_user_project). Check your ~/.bashrc for details. I've been trying to make this a bit more flexible (see Tip 2312A point 5) but note that I've not completed this work yet.

1. Switch to the branch and set it up for the first time:

   git checkout gf180-rbz-fsm
   mkdir -p dependencies
   # Changing OPENLANE_ROOT & PDK_ROOT optional if using Zero to ASIC VM:
     export OPENLANE_ROOT=$(pwd)/dependencies/openlane_src
     export PDK_ROOT=$(pwd)/dependencies/pdks
   # Required:
   export PDK=gf180mcuD
   # This will download and install caravel, the PDK, required OpenLane version, etc.
   make setup

2. Each time you want to harden:

   # Optional, as above:
     export OPENLANE_ROOT=$(pwd)/dependencies/openlane_src
     export PDK_ROOT=$(pwd)/dependencies/pdks
   # Required:
   export PDK=gf180mcuD
   
   # MAIN HARDENING STEP:
   make top_ew_algofoogle

Finalisation

NOTE: It is expected that each individual hardened project branch will be copied into one consolidated caravel_user_project when it is considered stable.

You should find that the information above does not deviate per branch, but the information below intentionally does.

Specific project for branch gf180-base: Common base project

You are on the branch that defines the 'clean base' project that is common to all other project branches.

This branch has no gds/, lef/, etc. because that is the domain of a real project which branches from this base.