magic

VLSI layout tool

Magic is a venerable VLSI layout tool, written in the 1980's at Berkeley by John Ousterhout, now famous primarily for writing the scripting interpreter language Tcl. Due largely in part to its liberal Berkeley open-source license, magic has remained popular with universities and small companies. The open-source license has allowed VLSI engineers with a bent toward programming to implement clever ideas and help magic stay abreast of fabrication technology. However, it is the well thought-out core algorithms which lend to magic the greatest part of its popularity. Magic is widely cited as being the easiest tool to use for circuit layout, even for people who ultimately rely on commercial tools for their product design flow.

qflow

Open-Source Digital Synthesis Flow

This is a complete tool chain for synthesizing digital circuits starting from verilog source and ending in physical layout for a specific target fabrication process. In the world of commercial electronics, digital synthesis with a target application of a chip design is usually bundled into large EDA software systems. As commercial electronics designers need to maintain cutting-edge performance, these commercial toolchains get more and more expensive, and have largely priced themselves out of all but the established integrated circuit manufacturers. This leaves an unfortunate gap where startup companies and small businesses cannot afford to do any sort of integrated circuit design. Qflow tries to fill this gap.