3.1. Hammer CAD Tools

Hammer currently has open-source CAD tool plugins in the hammer/src/hammer-vlsi/ folder and three repos for CAD tools from commercial vendors: hammer-cadence-plugins, hammer-synopsys-plugins, and hammer-mentor-plugins. hammer-cadence-plugins is a public repo but the others are private since they contain tool-specific commands not yet cleared for public release. Access to them may be granted for Hammer users who already have licenses for those tools. See the note about plugins access for instructions for how to request access.

The structure of each repository is as follows:

  • ACTION

    • TOOL_NAME

      • __init__.py contains the methods needed to implement the tool
      • defaults.yml contains the default Hammer IR needed by the tool

ACTION is the Hammer action name (e.g. par, synthesis, drc, etc.). TOOL_NAME is the name of the tool, which is referenced in your configuration. For example, having vlsi.core.par_tool_path: par_tool_foo in your configuration would expect a TOOL_NAME of par_tool_foo.