Fast Integration of EDA Tools and Scripting Language

EDA tools are implemented to automate a design task efficiently, but they often lack flexibility to be highly customizable or programmable. Some EDA tools have a primitive and unique command language to realize programmability, but usually it further complicates a design flow. We thus propose methods and crucial techniques to fast link EDA tools with a popular scripting language such as Perl[1], Tcl[2] or Python[3] for ease-of-use and better integration. This approach encourages rapid prototyping of algorithms, code reuse, customizability, extensibility, interoperability between tools, and easier testing of application program interface(API)’s. Based on the proposed methods and techniques, we efficiently built several Perl/Tcl/Python interfaces to EDA packages such as LEF/DEF parser, Synopsys .lib parser, Verilog PLI2.0 routines, SDF reader/writer and so on. These tools are great assests for chip designers to build a robust and powerful design flow, and this technique is a very generic approach towards integrating all the design tools together.