Open Source VLSI Tools

VLSI is one such field where the licensing cost of tools are so expensive that not many colleges have the availability of such tools. As a college graduate who want to learn VLSI, its becomes challenging when you don’t get the VLSI tools to apply your learnings and see the practical outcome. Good thing is that there are so many open source platforms available, where an individual can go & try out practical things without paying a single penny.  Problem is not so many students are aware about these opportunities, even colleges also don’t know about such platforms existence.

In this article of Mosgyan, we will know about various free platforms which anyone can use for different purpose of VLSI Domain ranging from circuit design, layout design, physical design to PCB design.

Schematic/circuit development VLSI tools:

Lets first talk about Schematic/Circuit development tools.

Gnucap

GNUcap is a tool which can be used for circuit simulator. It can be used for DC, AC, Trans & fourier analysis. GNUcap package can perform mixed mode simulation as well. It can also help in automated model generation.

Ngspice

Ngspice is open source spice simulator. Ngspice doesn’t offer GUI support its offer CLI (Command line interface). Ngspice offers script creation which helps in automation of simulation flow.

Qucs

Qucs is an acronym of Quite Universal Circuit Simulator. The best thing about Qucs is that it offers GUI based experience to its users. Its power packed circuit simulator. Qucs can also help in importing existing SPICE models which can be used in simulations.

These all tools are used in VLSI Domain, if you are an Electronics & Communication graduate & not sure whether you should choose VLSI as a career or not? In that case you can consider to read this article at Mosgyan which will provide you good insights about this field:

What is VLSI Design? Good for Career in 2025?

Verilog simulators

Lets discuss about Verilog simulators now:

Verilator

Verilator is free tool available which can be used to convert written Verilog code into the behavioral model in C or C++. Verilator is so good for running massive amount of tests.

Icarus Verilog

Icarus Verilog is free tool like verilator. It can be used in Linux, MS Windows, Mac OS, Open solaris and at many other platforms. It can be suitable alternative for cadence’s Verilog-XL. Icarus Verilog converts the written hardware descriptive language to desired netlisting format.

Layout Editors

Till now we discussed about Circuit design tools & Verilog simulators now lets talk about Layout Editors.

Magic

Magic is a free tool used to draw layout of designed circuit. Magic has lot of pre built features which makes it fun for designers to draw a circuit layout. Magic has built in know how of layout rules, it checks for rule violation while layout implementation. It also offers circuit extractor feature.

Toped

Toped is open source layout editor tool. It supports GDS, CIF & OASIS formats. In toped layout generation happens through its built in feature of script interpreter.

Netgen: Compare netlist

Netgen does exactly the same Job which a layout editor tool in industry performs & known as LVS. LVS is basically comparison between Layout & Schematic. Netgen compares the circuit layout with circuit netlist. It is free tool for non commercial usage. It also helps in mesh optimization & mesh refinement.

Electric: CAD tool

Electric is a CAD system used for the design of an IC (Integrated Circuit).  It’s a full package & can perform various tasks which are required while an IC development. From circuit design, layout, DRC Check, LVS Check, placement, routing, logical effort analysis, silicon compilation to simulation & handling various file formats all are done through this Electric CAD suite package.

Verification platforms/tools

Lets quickly discuss about some verification tools or platforms.

OS-VVM

OS VVM is an acronym of Open source VHDL verification methodology. Its provides the advanced verification test methods for digital verification. The test methods consist the coverage of  driven randomization & functional coverage.

Jove

Jove is used in hardware design verification of ASICs (Application specific Integrated Circuit’s) & FPGAs. It consists of JAVA APIs & uses JAVA language fir hardware verification.

PCB Design

PCB Design is one of among those skills which are taught in almost every other engineering college. Lets see what are some of the best freely available PCB design tools which a student can take in use:

Free PCB

Free PCB is available for Microsoft Windows & free to use. It can be used to produce professional quality PCB designs.

Kicad

KiCad is like  Electric CAD suite explained above. KiCad provides all the features for PCB development. It can help in circuit design, PCB layout generation & also in library editing.

STA Tool

Open timer

Open Timer tool offer help to circuit designers in quickly assessing the circuit timing. This tool is designed using C++. This tool supports industry standard format. It also provides in depth analysis of circuit timings through graph & path based timing feature.

These are some of the freely available open source VLSI tools which any one can use. So as a student if you wish to learn any of the VLSI skills, you can use the specific tool/platform to implement your learnings and build up your skill set.

Also, in case if you wish to know more about open source VLSI tools available online you can watch out this video which consist of not only these tools which we discussed just now but also few more tools which can be used by any one if he/she wish to make their career in VLSI: