An open-source power simulation flow using OpenROAD

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  • Speaker(s): Philippe Sauter or Thomas Benz
  • email: phsauter@iis.ee.ethz.ch

Downloads

File:Phsauter fsic2025 powersim.pdf


Abstract

Power simulations are a critical aspect of modern ASIC design, enabling evaluation of runtime efficiency and to ensure proper operation of a chip. Open-source EDA tools like OpenSTA and OpenROAD offer capabilities to set a global or local switching activity, or import a value-change dump (vcd) to perform power simulation. To our knowledge, a fully open-source end-to-end power simulation flow has not been demonstrated—until now. We present a comprehensive power simulation flow integrating simulation, switching activity extraction and power analysis using open-source tools. We validate our approach on Basilisk, a fully open-source Linux-capable SoC tapped out in IHPs 130nm technology, demonstrating the flows viability for ASIC design.

Software

General information

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Roadmap

  • Improve memory and runtime for powersim flow (OpenROAD, Icarus Verilog, Verilator)
  • Analyze accuracy of results on small and large designs (OpenROAD)
  • Calibrate against silicon measurements (using Basilisk and MLEM)

Previous work

  1. OpenROAD/OpenSTA power simulation: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10323736
  2. Basilisk:
    1. https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.15107
    2. https://github.com/pulp-platform/cheshire-ihp130-o
    3. https://github.com/phsauter/TO_May2024_basilisk/tree/basilisk/Basilisk
  3. Croc SoC:
    1. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.05090
    2. https://github.com/pulp-platform/croc/
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