Emilio Isaac Baungarten-Leon
From RTL to Fabrication: Survey of Open-Source EDA Tools and PDKs
Electronics 2026, 15(5), 1048;
DOI: 10.3390/electronics15051048
* Departamento de Electromecánica, Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, Zapopan 45129, Mexico
Abstract: This article aims to synthesize the current ecosystem of open-source tools for Integrated Circuit (IC) design, covering the entire digital design flow from Register-Transfer Level (RTL) description to fabricable layouts. The survey categorizes and analyzes tools across major stages of design, including code-generation tools, logic synthesis, simulation, and physical design flow. Special emphasis is given to the fabricable open-source Process Design Kit (PDK), which enables the physical realization of open-hardware projects. By examining interoperability, limitations, and maturity across this toolchain, the article provides a comprehensive overview of the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) landscape and identifies the research and educational opportunities that arise from democratizing silicon design through open and reproducible workflows.
Fig: (a) IC design flow illustrating the complete process from RTL specification through logic synthesis, physical design (floorplanning, placement, clock tree synthesis, routing), verification, and final GDSII generation for fabrication. (b) FPGA design flow showing the progression from RTL description to synthesis, technology mapping, placement-and-routing on the target FPGA fabric, bitstream generation, and device configuration.
Acknowledgments: The APC was funded by Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara (UAG), financial support provided through its Fondo Semilla. The author gratefully acknowledges the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara (UAG) for the financial support provided through its Fondo Semilla program, which covered the article processing charges and enabled the publication of this work. During the preparation of this manuscript, the authors utilized GPT-5.2 solely to enhance the clarity, grammar, and overall quality of the English text. The author reviewed and edited all AI-assisted content and takes full responsibility for the accuracy, originality, and integrity of the final manuscript.
Table A1. Main open-source EDA tools and their official repositories
| Category | Tool | Official Link |
|---|---|---|
| Code-Generation Tools | PandA Bambu HLS | https://github.com/ferrandi/PandA-bambu (accessed on 20 January 2026) |
| Kiwi Compiler | https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~djg11/kiwi/ (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| LegUp HLS | https://github.com/LegUpComputing/legup-examples?tab=readme-ov-file (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| ROCCC | http://roccc.cs.ucr.edu/ (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| PyMTL3 | https://github.com/pymtl/pymtl3 (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| Chisel | https://www.chisel-lang.org/ (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| SpinalHDL | https://github.com/SpinalHDL/SpinalHDL (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| Pyverilog | https://github.com/PyHDI/Pyverilog (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| Amaranth HDL | https://github.com/amaranth-lang (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| LLM-Based Code Generation | RTLCoder | https://github.com/hkust-zhiyao/RTL-Coder (accessed on 20 January 2026) |
| Spec2RTL-Agent | https://cirkitly.kernex.sbs/ (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| OriGen | https://github.com/pku-liang/OriGen (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| AutoChip | https://github.com/shailja-thakur/AutoChip (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| CodeV | https://github.com/cluesmith/codev (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| VeriCoder | https://github.com/Anjiang-Wei/VeriCoder (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| StarCoder | https://github.com/bigcode-project/starcoder (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| CodeLlama | https://github.com/meta-llama/codellama (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| DeepSeek-Coder | https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-Coder (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| CodeQwen | https://github.com/QwenLM/qwen-code (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| Gemini | https://gemini.google.com/ (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| GPT | https://chatgpt.com/ (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| ChatEDA | https://github.com/wuhy68/ChatEDA (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| Synthesis Tools | Yosys | https://yosyshq.net/yosys/ (accessed on 20 January 2026) |
| ABC (Berkeley) | https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~alanmi/abc/ (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| ODIN II (VTR) | https://docs.verilogtorouting.org/en/latest/odin/ (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| GHDL-Yosys Plugin | https://github.com/YosysHQ/yosys (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| Synlig | https://github.com/chipsalliance/synlig (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| Mockturtle (EPFL) | https://github.com/lsils/mockturtle (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| Simulation & Verification Tools | Verilator | https://www.veripool.org/verilator/ (accessed on 20 January 2026) |
| Icarus Verilog | https://steveicarus.github.io/iverilog/ (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| cocotb | https://www.cocotb.org/ (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| GTKWave | https://gtkwave.sourceforge.net/ (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| Yosys-SMTBMC | https://symbiyosys.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference.html (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| EQY | https://github.com/YosysHQ/eqy (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| CoSA | https://github.com/cristian-mattarei/CoSA (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| OpenSTA | https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenSTA (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| OpenTimer | https://github.com/OpenTimer/OpenTimer (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| Tatum (VTR) | https://github.com/verilog-to-routing/tatum (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| Physical Design Flow Tools | OpenROAD | https://theopenroadproject.org/ (accessed on 20 January 2026) |
| OpenLane | https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenLane (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| iEDA | https://github.com/OSCC-Project/iEDA (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| SiliconComp | https://github.com/siliconcompiler/siliconcompiler (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| Fabricable PDKs | SKY130 | https://github.com/gdsfactory/skywater130 (accessed on 20 January 2026) |
| GF180MCU | https://github.com/google/gf180mcu-pdk (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| IHP SG13G2 | https://github.com/IHP-GmbH/IHP-Open-PDK (accessed on 20 January 2026) | |
| ICsprout55 | https://github.com/openecos-projects/icsprout55-pdk (accessed on 20 January 2026) |
