If you find an error in what I’ve made, then fork, fix lectures/lr0_tools.md, commit, push and create a pull request. That way, we use the global brain power most efficiently, and avoid multiple humans spending time on discovering the same error.

PDF

Status: 1.0

Tools

I would strongly recommend that you install all tools locally on your system. There is a video that describe the install procedure. It’s a few years old, but should still be able to guide you https://youtu.be/DRppsdjo2Rc?si=x8cJsa1lpncvSFmu.

For the analog toolchain we need some tools, and a process design kit (PDK).

The tools are not that big, but the PDK is huge, so you need to have about 50 GB disk space available.

Setup WSL (Applicable for Windows users)

Install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu 24.04 LTS by running the following command in PowerShell on Windows and follow the instructions.

wsl --install -d Ubuntu-24.04

When you have installed the Linux distribution and signed into it, install make

sudo apt install make

Setup public key towards github

Do

ssh-keygen -t rsa

And press “enter” on most things, or if you’re paranoid, add a passphrase

Then

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

And add the public key to your github account. Settings - SSH and GPG keys

Provide git with author identity

There are interactions with git that require an author identity. You are supposed to use one of these interactions a lot during the project, namely, git commit. What you need to provide is an email address and a name. If you would like to keep your real email address private/secret, read what it says on GitHub at your user settings page under emails. Use the below commands to provide the author identity information to git.

git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
git config --global user.name "Your Name"

Get AICEX and setup your shell

You don’t have to put aicex in $HOME/pro, but if you don’t know where to put it, chose that directory.

cd 
mkdir pro 
cd pro
git clone --recursive https://github.com/wulffern/aicex.git

You need to add the following to your ~/.bashrc (note that ~ refers to your home directory $HOME/.bashrc also works, or $HOME/.bash_profile on some newer macs)

export PDK_ROOT=/opt/pdk/share/pdk
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/eda/lib
export PATH=/opt/eda/bin:$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH

On systems with python3 > 3.12

On newer systems it’s not trivial to install python packages because python is externally managed. As such, we need to install a python environment.

#- Find a package similar to name below
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install python3.12-venv
sudo mkdir /opt
sudo mkdir /opt/eda
sudo mkdir /opt/eda/python3
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /opt/eda/python3/
python3 -m venv /opt/eda/python3

Modify the ~/.bashrc to include the python environment

export PATH=/opt/eda/bin:/opt/eda/python3/bin:$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH

Install Tools

Make sure you load the settings before you proceed

source ~/.bashrc

Hopefully the commands below work, if not, then try again, or try to understand what fails. There is no point in continuing if one command fails.

cd aicex/tests/
make requirements
make tt

On a mac, you probably need to add bison to the path

export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/bison/bin:$PATH"

I’ve split the install of each of the tools. It’s possible to run the commented out lines instead, but they often fail

#make eda_compile
#sudo make eda_install
make magic_compile  magic_install
make netgen_compile netgen_install
make xschem_compile xschem_install
make iverilog_compile iverilog_install
make ngspice_compile # Sometimes fails
make ngspice_compile ngspice_install

On Mac, do

brew install yosys verilator

On Linux, do

make yosys_compile yosys_install

On all, do

python3 -m ensurepip --default-pip

python3 -m pip install matplotlib numpy click svgwrite \
    pyyaml pandas tabulate wheel setuptools tikzplotlib
source install_open_pdk.sh

Install cicconf

cIcConf is used for configuration. How the IPs are connected, and what version of IPs to get.

cd
cd pro/aicex/ip/cicconf
git checkout main 
git pull
python3 -m pip install -e .
cd ../

Update IPs

cicconf clone --https 
cd ../..

Install cicsim

cIcSim is used for simulation orchestration.

cd aicex/ip/cicsim
git checkout main
git pull
python3 -m pip install -e .
cd ../..

Install cicpy

CicPy is used to generate layout

cd aicex/ip/cicpy 
git checkout master
git pull
python3 -m pip install -e .
cd ../..
cd aicex/ip/cicspi 
git checkout main 
git pull
python3 -m pip install -e .
cd ../..

Setup your ngspice settings

Edit ~/.spiceinit and add

set ngbehavior=hsa     ; set compatibility for PDK libs
set ng_nomodcheck      ; don't check the model parameters
set num_threads=8      ; CPU hardware threads available
set skywaterpdk
option noinit          ; don't print operating point data
option klu
optran 0 0 0 100p 2n 0 ; don't use dc operating point,
option opts

Check that magic and xschem works

To check that magic and xschem works

cd ~/pro/aicex/ip/sun_sar9b_sky130nm/work 
magic ../design/SUN_SAR9B_SKY130NM/SUNSAR_SAR9B_CV.mag &
xschem -b ../design/SUN_SAR9B_SKY130NM/SUNSAR_SAR9B_CV.sch &