OpenROAD demo project and gallery

[oharboe]

https://github.com/oharboe/openroad-demo/

Thoughts?

[fredowski]

I guess this project from ETH Zürich can be considered a demo project:

https://github.com/pulp-platform/croc

In my course I used OpenROAD-flow-scripts. I added vhdl/yosys support and added a vexriscv "murax" vhdl design. But I only used the ./flow parts and installed the tools with build scripts. It was nice to be able to switch between designs and technologies. When I added sram macros I figured out that the ihp pdk was buggy. Is there any design in OpenROAD-flow-scripts with macros placed?

I think the croc build scripts are more straightforward as they only target this one design. In OpenROAD-flow-scripts you need to figure out how to intervene if something does not work, e.g. custom step scripts for macro placement. Also everything is handled by variables which switch on/off or change some behaviour. This makes it more difficult to figure out what is actually done.

I think you have made quite a lot for the OpenROAD-flow-scripts. If all designs had croc full scripts for all technologies currently supported, that would be like 60 design-pdk scripts. Would that be copy hell in your experience?

[maliberty]

Yes. It would be a maintenance problem as any flow change would need to update 60 places. Any experiment that can be done with a flow variable would also need 60 updates.